OUR SOLDIERS' GRAVES. 



9 



I have so far referred only to those who lie buried in our well- 

 ordered cemeteries, but it must not be forgotten that there are many 

 who have been buried where they fell on the great Somme battlefield 

 of 1916. The identification and reverent burial of those who fell in 

 that great advance has been a great task finely achieved. Each 

 grave has been surmounted with a white cross and enclosed with a 

 wire fence. When I visited the region in July 1917, the whole of 

 that desolate shell-hole region was transfigured and glorified by the 

 common scarlet poppy, and the sight was more beautiful than any 

 words of mine can express. 



Flanders' Fields.* 



In Flanders' Fields the poppies blow 

 Between the crosses, row on row, 

 That mark our place, and in the sky 

 The larks still bravely singing fly, 

 Scarce heard amidst the guns below. 

 We are the dead. Short days ago 

 We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, 

 Loved and were loved ; and now we lie 

 In Flanders' Fields. 



Take up our quarrel with the foe, 

 To you from failing hands we throw 

 The Torch — be yours to hold it high ; 

 If ye break faith with us who die, 

 We shall not sleep, though poppies grow 



In Flanders' Fields. (Lt.-Col. John McCrae.) 



Picture to yourselves a vast undulating landscape, a blaze of 

 scarlet unbroken by tree or hedgerow, with here and there long stretches 

 of white Chamomile and patches of yellow Charlock, dotted over with 

 the half-hidden white crosses of the dead. 



Smaller patches of Charlock were often conspicuous, and these 

 usually marked the more recently dug graves where seeds, doubtless 

 long buried, had been brought to the surface. 



In no cemetery, large or small, however beautiful or impressive 

 it may be, can the same sentiments be evoked or feelings be so deeply 

 stirred. Nowhere, I imagine, could the magnitude of the struggle 

 be better appreciated than in that peaceful, poppy-covered battlefield, 

 haliowed by its many scattered crosses. 



Not all who perished on that battlefield have been identified, 

 but a cross stands at the head of every grave, sometimes bearing the 

 inscription to " an unknown British Soldier." 



For " Some there be w ho have no memorial : who are perished 

 as though they had never been." 



" Splendour unfading for their land they won, 

 And then the shadowy robe of death put on. 

 Yet died and are not dead ; for their brave might 

 Fames, and uplifts them from the realms of night. "f 



* Printed in Nature, Feb. 21. 191 8, p. 488, in the obituary notice of the 

 author, Lt.-Col. John McCrae of the Canadian Army Medical Corps — also a 

 Canadian poet. He published war poems in 7 he Spectator and in Punch. 



t Simonides' Epitaph on the Lacedaemonian Dead at Plataea, translation 

 by the late Dr. Walter Headlam, published in his Book of Greek Verse, p. 47. 

 Cambridge University Press, 1907. 



