e soaked.
It seems more fitting so, with the black clouds there and all. It
reminds me of 'The Return from Calvary' in the painting," one of the
party said impressively.

Up the winding hill we climbed, and there gaunt and cruel against a
sombre sky stood the three crosses, just as we have always imagined
them. The hill was so high that it overlooked as beautiful a valley as
I had seen in all France. It was in Brittany, as yet untouched by the
war as far as its fields are concerned (not so its men and its women
and its homes); but on that spring day as we looked down from the hill
of Calvary we could see off in the distance the tomb, with the stone
rolled away, and life-size angels standing there with uplifted wings.
Then farther along the road, perhaps another quarter mile away, on
another hill, were the figures of the disciples, and the women watching
the ascension with rapt faces, and a glory shone round about them all.

And as we stood there on that Calvary, built in memory of the
crucifixion and resurrection and ascension of their Master by the
peasants, and looked down over the earth, bright with crimson poppies
everywhere in field and hill, brilliant with the old-gold blossom of
the broom flower, as we stood there, our hearts subdued to awe and
wonder, looking down, suddenly the rain ceased and the sun shone in its
full glory and lighted anew the white marble of the figures of the
ascension far below us in the field.

As we stood there the thought came to me:

"So is the Christian world standing today on the hill of 'Calvaire.'
The storms have been black about the Christian world. The clouds have
seemed impenetrable. The earth has been desolate. We have walked on
our hands and knees and in our bare feet up the flinty road of
Baupaume, 'the saddest road in Christendom,' and along this road we
have borne the cross. We, the Christian world, the mothers, the
fathers, the little children, have bled. We have stumbled and fallen
along the way. And when we climbed the hill of Calvary, as we have
been doing for these years of war, the clouds darkened and we saw only
the ominous silhouettes of the three crosses.

"But the sun is now breaking the clouds, and it shall burn its way to a
glorious day. Across the fields we see the open tomb and the
resurrection is about to dawn; the day of brotherhood, democracy,
justice, love, and peace forever.

"Hope is in the world, hope brooding, hope dominant, hope triump