e
mud, and dirt and hurt; the wounds and pain and death which are
everywhere.

Then he turns from all the suffering to find a blood-red poppy blooming
in the field behind him; or a million of them covering a green field
like a great blanket. These poppies are exactly like our golden
California poppies. Like them they grow in the fields and along the
hedges; even covering the unsightly railroad-tracks, as if they would
hide the ugly things of life.

I thought to myself: "They look as if they had once been our golden
California poppies, but that in these years of war every last one of
them had been dipped in the blood of those brave lads who have died for
us, and forever after shall they be crimson in memory of these who have
given so much for humanity."

One day in early June I was driving through Brittany along the coast of
the Atlantic. On the road we passed many old-fashioned men, and women
in their little white bonnets and their black dresses.

We stopped at a beautiful little farmhouse for lunch. It attracted us
because of its serene appearance and its cleanliness. A gray-haired
little old woman was in the yard when we stopped our machine.

The yard was literally sprinkled with blood-red poppies. As we walked
in and were making known our desire for lunch a beautiful girl of about
twenty-five, dressed in mourning, stepped to the doorway, her black
eyes flashing a welcome, and cried out: "Welcome, comrade Americaine."
Behind her was a little girl, her very image.

I guessed at once that in this quiet Brittany home the war had reached
out its devastating hand. I had remarked earlier in the day as we
drove along: "It is all so quiet and beautiful here, with the old-gold
broom flowering everywhere on hedge and hill, and with the crimson
poppies blowing in the wind, that it doesn't seem as if war had touched
Brittany."

A friend who knew better said: "But have you not noticed that women are
pulling the carts, women are tilling the fields? Look at that woman
over there pulling a plough. Have you not noticed that there are no
men but old men everywhere?"

He was right. I could not remember to have seen any young men, and
everywhere women were working in the field, and in one place a woman
was yoked up with an ox, ploughing, while a young girl drove the odd
pair.

"And if that isn't enough, wait until we come to the next cathedral and
I'll show you what corresponds to our 'Honor Rolls' in the churches