!i!Sg#.li«! 



:the> 



IB 



ii5ir^:^ii 



FACING EAST TO 



FLANDERS' FIELDS 



Memorial day now means more than the memory of Gettysburg and 

 Richmond. The ranks of this nati-on's soldier veterans have been swelled by 

 the millions who participated in the recent great war. The loss of those who 

 died in France is poignant and their memory will be honored with flowers. 





ETERANW of the 

 Civil war are most- 

 ly gone. The old 

 blue-coats that re- 

 main of the Grand 

 Army of the Be- 

 public to parade 

 on the day sacred 

 to their memory 

 are fewer and 

 fewer each year. But the day 

 they instituted to honor their 

 «arlier-departed comrades has 

 become, not merely an emblem 

 of their sacrifices and their 

 service, but a day of national 

 reverence for those who, in each 

 of its wars, have served our 

 country. May 30 we honor all 

 the nation's soldier dead, 

 whether they served in our 

 jfrandfathers' time or in ours. 



World War Lengthens List. 



The Spanish war, not a great 

 military exploit, cost few lives 

 and added little to Memorial 

 day. That occasion still re- 

 mained, primarily and princi- 

 pally, the day of Civil war 

 veterans. But now another war, 

 exceeding even our country's 

 internal strife in its cost and 

 loss of life, has added to the 

 honor roll of this country's sol- 

 dier dead a long list. Of them, 

 70,000 died on the battlefields 

 and in the hospitals of Europe. 

 As many more died of disease 

 in camps at home. The total 

 number of American youths 

 who served in the great war 

 made the vast armies of ISGl-B.l small 

 by comparison. All these, whether they 

 were among the two million who served 

 overseas, or among the millions that 

 wore in the camps in this country, 

 preparing to follow, count friends 

 among those who died in uniform. So, 

 this year, May ."^O becomes a day of ob- 

 servance, not just to the few blue- 

 coated old men of the thinning G. A. R. 

 ranks and to the descendants of those 

 who once wore that uniform, but to the 

 great mass of tbe nation who served or 

 whoso sons and brothers served in the 

 rcoont groat war. All that vast number 

 feel the nearness of those 60,000 who 

 lie in the war cemeteries of France and 

 Flanders and of the 10,000 whose leaden 

 coffins have borne them home to Amer- 

 ican graves. Armistice day is a day of 

 thanksgiving, recalling the worldwide 



rejoicing on that unforgettable Novem- 

 ber 11 in 1918. But Memorial day is 

 the day of honor to the dead, when all, 

 whether G. A. R., Sons of Veterans or 

 American Legion, unite in paying hom- 

 age to departed comrades. 



Memorial Day Memories. 



So, this May 30, instead of merely 

 recalling the memories of Gettysburg 

 and Richmond, most of us will be fac- 

 ing east toward Flanders' fields, in 

 thought if not in act, in remembrance 

 of those above whom the poppies of 

 .those foreign fields bloom each spring. 



Those poppies have become symbolic 

 of the lives which were the cost of vic- 

 tory. As the emblem to be worn in 

 memory of them on the day set for that 

 purpose, the poppy has been designated 

 by several organizations of war vet- 



erans. In choosing that flower, 

 their minds ran back to such 

 fields of poppies as that de- 

 picted on the cover of this issue. 

 Fields such as this were fa- 

 miliar to the soldiers who fought 

 in Flanders and to the many 

 American lads who occupied 

 trenches in Lorraine. In April 

 and May, when the young 

 green wheat stood but a few 

 inches high, the poppies, outdis- 

 tancing the slower grain in 

 growth, covered the rolling 

 fields with a veritable mantle of 

 red. The poppy there is the 

 rankest of weeds and fills the 

 meadows with color, producing 

 blooms that are commonly four 

 and five inches across. 



Spring Landscape. 



The vivid sight created by 

 this flower in the spring land- 

 scape along the battle front 

 seemed a marvel to the youths 

 accustomed to the small, paler 

 poppy that blooms in American 

 gardens. As its bright color 

 seemed emblematic of life in 

 surroundings where death was 

 dealt on every hand, the poppy 

 of Flanders is the Memorial day 

 flower of those Americans who 

 saw, in the spring of 1918, fields 

 such as this. 



And part of such a landscape, 

 in truth, was the wrinkled old 

 woman who stands in this field. 

 She typifies the impassive, stoic 

 peasant who continued to till 

 the fields in the day, though 

 guns thundered at night. Her hus- 

 l)and and brothers left her to fight in 

 '71, and after two score years her sons 

 and grandsons left her to fight again. 

 So she, and many like her, labored 

 to till what fields she could and to 

 harvest what grain she was able. To 

 her the poppies were weeds, making no 

 appeal to her sentiment. But that she 

 was not without such sentiment was, 

 perhaps, shown by the care she lavished 

 on the rectangular mounds, marked by 

 white wooden crosses, that occupied a 

 corner of her field until their contents 

 were removed to the great cemeteries at 

 Romagnes or Bois de Belleau or another 

 such place, where French and American 

 comrades will tend them in her stead 

 this May 30, when kinsfolk and friends 

 will decorate with flowers thousands of 

 similar graves in this country. 



