d as a French schoolgirl 15
of fourteen wrote, "Birds could fly over it with one
sweep of their wings. And on the two banks there were
millions of men, the one turned towards the other, eye to
eye. But the distance which separated them was greater
than the stars in the sky; it was the distance which separates
right from injustice."

It was a tiny river; it was the Yser.

* * * * *

Oxen drawing the cultivating plows that will help feed
France and win the war almost splash into its shallow edges 5
as they turn the furrow. And on hot July days, the old
man who prods them with his pointed stick and the sturdy
woman who handles the plow let them drink their fill of
its cooling waters--not plunging their noses deep like
thirsty horses but gently drawing in the water with the lips, 10
after the manner of oxen.

It is a quiet stream that a child could ford without danger.
It flows slowly and sweetly from the mother hills to the
embracing sea. A few arched bridges leap from one low
bank to another. It has not cut deep into the land of 15
France but it has cut deep into the heart of France. It is
one of the ribbons of victory and glory that France will
always wear across her breast. And it is a ribbon made red
by the blood of the men of France who have died for France.

And yet we of America would call it a little stream, and 20
old men would fish all day in it from a shaded velvet point,
and boys swimming would hunt some favorite Devil's Hole
where they might dive.

It is the Marne.

* * * * *

For four years now it has flowed peacefully on while 25
men have fought to scar its banks with trenches--burrowing
themselves into the earth as only the muskrat had done
in the forgotten days of peace. Strong, unafraid men came
from the ends of the world to die by its side. And it would
have gladly sung them a sweet, low lullaby, crooning a song 30
with which mothers on the shores of all the seven seas had
once rocked them to sleep--only now the sound of heavy
firing, dull booms of the cannon, and the spit and nervous
drum of the machine gun, made its song as futile and indistinguishable
as the whisper of a child in the roar of a mob. 5

What a story its sweet waters had to tell to all the rivers