Fulton County tribune. (Wauseon, Ohio) 1883-1925, 1921-05-26

Describing visit paid last year
TO the battlefields of France, Faith
Hunter Dodge wrote as follows In the
New York Tribune:
Here's flowers for you," wrote
Shakespeare.
Here's flowers for you," repeat
Americans and French, lavish in their
giving for Our Boys Memorial day.
Here's flowers for you," echo the
sun-kissed hills and valleys of France
never more prodigal of blossoms. And
every American soldiers grave in
France is heaped high with wreaths
and flowers on Memorial day. Daffo-
dis in wild profusion, blue iris, red
poppies and peonies, sweet-smelling
white syringas and pale primrose find
their places among the numberless
wreaths of immortefles.
Flowers Everywhere.
From slimiest shell holes and pol
sonous trenches myriad violets are
springing; they seem to have sought
each sacred spot where soldier
fell. Down in deserted dugouts we
pick up bits of shrapnel and under
meath find violets and anemones
They thrust their petals through the
wreckage of crushed and crumbling
stones and plaster of ruined houses
they hug the twisted rails of aban-
doned Zeppelin-torn railroad tracks
they wind their slight stems about
barbed wire and peek through the
fallen, tattered,. torn remnants of
camoufiage. The sobs which rise un-
hidden in the throat Of every visitor
to this holy ground are stifled at the
sight Of them: for they bring an In
disputable air of beauty, purity peace
hope and happiness to this desolate,
devastated, striken land.
Recently I went back to the battle
fields of Verdun, St. Mihiel, the Ar
gonne, Belleau Woods and scissors.
there found ruin, desolation, destruc-
ton indescribable-and ashes.
But the pussy willows were in bud
beside the road, and percentage thrust
their snowy petals through broken
stone and rusted iron. Out in the
American cemetery at Ploisy every
grave had it's own fresh, dew-moist.
ened roses on the graves at Juvigny
were hyacirfths and lilies; In Belleau
woods buttercups paved the ground
with gold and in the Argonne violets
and anemones blossomed unafraid.
Where 500 Americans Lie.
In the little white-cross cemetery
at Verdun, where lie fiv" hundred
khaki-clad heroes under the Stars and
Stripes, anemones, narcIssus, hyacinths
and lilies are swinging In the breeze
shedding their perfume like censers in
q temple.
Children trudged daily out to Ro-
magne, their black aprons filed with
flowers and plants which their loving
hands transplanted to the American
graves guarded by their 23.OO0 shining
white crosses and their 23,0O0 flags.
And far away beyond the plains of the
Woevre the violet blue Of the clear,
soft atmosphere meets the infinite
blue Of the skies.
The very soil of France, revivIfied
and triumphant. is joining In the peo-
pies paeans Of praise to the heroic
soldiers who fell for just cause.
How kind the world is 7" exclaimed
Helen Wolcott when she found her
aviator brothers. grave, at Laffincourt.
"How kind the world isl" she cried
in a letter to her father. DR.. Wolcott,
head of the Smithsonian institution,
at Washington. And because that let
ter is typical, because 1t tells the story
Of the American graves in France,
here 1t is for others who have known
the anguish of bereavement:
An American Boys Grave.
"Oh, Daddy dear, found our boy
today, just above a poor little ruined
town, town of quaint narrow streets,
holIow-eyed houses. crumbled walls
ard burnt-out desolation everywhere.
Just above and near the top of low
broad hill was little cemetery in a
rectangle of tall pine trees, with a
vine-covered wooden fence around it.
1T is a country of low rolling hills,
and, as far as the eyes can reach,
nothing but unfenced fields.
"Stuart is almost in the middle of
the rectangle, with perhaps two hun