Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1922-10-26

A few weeks ago StOOQ on d DdLIIS uelu
in the midst Of the devastated region in
France. Here for four years the struggle
went on without ceasing. Every foot of the
ground was fought over hundred times,
and taken and retaken. Every clod was soak
ed in blood.
After the war the earth was gashed by
trenches and pitted with shell holes until it
looked like a rabbit warren. Rusty entangle-
ments of barbed wire hung like brown cob
web over the ground. OF the pretty little cot
tages, and picturesque villages that once DOT
ted the plain, not o4.e remained. There was
no sign to show that there had been happy
prosperous farming country with children
playing in doorw VS., and men and women
singing at their work
utter ruin," people said, surveying this
scene only year or two ago, utter desola-
ton! Hopeless!"
But Time, the healer, Time the adjuster
has been at work. What was No Mans Land
is now Gods Garden. The winds and the
rains have beaten down the harsh ridges OF
the trenches and filled up the shell holes, and
from the soil where lie in unknown graves
so many of the SINS Of France, there mas
bloomed such a luxu"iance of flowers as
have never seen before.
Waist high they grew, and millions upon
millions of blooms there are-white of da1s
les, scarlet of peoples, blue OF ragged ROBINS
1t is as if the coIors of France sprang from
the very bodies Of the men who died that shs
might live.
Already the peasants are creeping back to
the land that has belonged to their families
for -rturies and that is part of their very
being. Already piles of heaped up bar0ed
wire along the roadways tel how they are
wrestling their fields from the purposes OF
war back to the purposes of peace.
Already the dugou.s in which men hid their
faces from the an, Ell Of death, md the tele-
phone stations from which went forth the
messages that were the ,.~crees of fate, are
cru1npIing away, their timbt-~ fallen, their
outlines '.urred few more winter winds,
few more summer rains, and there will be
nothin physical left TO show where the
worlds Titanic combat between might and
right took Place.
Time will have done it's work, as it has
done it for thousands upon thousands or
otht, battlefields, where men fought, and
bIed and died, and where fusty archaeolO-
gists now potter, and dig, and Gelve, among
broken fragments of forgotten things that
were once the symbols of hope and glory, or
defeat and despair.
And as I looked at the place of which,
through four bitter anxious years l I'd read
with a heart that stood still with fear, or
leaped with joy as the tide of victory swung
this way or that, and that l saw now so gatly
Haunting its banner of blue, and white, and
red in the summer wind, l marFeIIed at the
magic wrOnged by Time.
And / wondered that we mOrtals had not
the faith to trust to Time the solution OF
those difficulties with which we vainly VeX
our puny human intelligence, and That we
find it so hard to realize that at last, Time
binds Up our broken spirits and bodies, even
as it does those of a s. eat battlefield.
Do we grieve? Time is the great counsel
err 1t is Time that takes you to its breast
and rocks you in IS arms and comforts you
as a mother comforts a child who weeps.
Tears can not always flow. No wCdnd can
always bleed Time lays its gentle hand upon
us, and somehow he smiles chase away the
tears, and the wound heals
Death robs us of those who were the very
core of our hearts. 1t seems impossible that
W. should so on living without them. At
! first every minute of every day stabs lis with
a fresh sense of loss. Their ) no place to
which we can fly from our desolation; IN
way in which we can throttle the memories
| that torture us. There is no help for us but
| in Time, the one anodyne for sorrow.
1t breathes upon us and slowly, slowly the
! pain is eased. We grow accustomed to the
| loneliness; the sharp edges Of loss is dulled;
| and even memory is blurred until those that
were once the most vital things in existence
| become to US like the dim shapes of angels
! seen in our dreami
! And Time is the areat and infalIibe adj
! juster Of our problems How often we Dor
row trouble worrying over the future What