and Mr. Hoover have given us within the past week a glimpse of the 
seriousness of the situation of the Alhes in 191 7, it will nevertheless, 
I beheve, be a shock to 3'^ou as it was to me, to learn that if the war had 
lasted two weeks more Mr. Wallace himself would have been drafted, 
as on November i, 191 8, he had been examined and passed. This 
does not sound so remarkable until I tell you his age, which was at 
that time 51, which shows you the conditions in England in that time 
better than any long dissertation. 
As I have told you, the great collections of Mr. Perry have been 
nearly wrecked, in fact he gave up trying to keep anything but his 
rare rock plants, and these have survived. It will, of course, be a 
simple matter for him to replenish his stock of the ordinary herbaceous 
plants for which he was famous, but he told me that he believed it 
would be easier for him to move to a new location than to attempt to 
straighten out the mess in his old nurseries. His nursery by the way, 
although far removed from the war, was situated so close to many of 
the munition districts, that it was subject to air raids. 
The Barr nurseries at Taplow were also full of weeds but here also 
Mr. Barr had succeeded in saving his best plants and they will un- 
doubtedly be as good as ever in a few years. The only really well-kept 
place I saw in England was Kew Gardens. It is perfectly evident, 
however, that large numbers of splendid flowers were being grown in 
both these countries, for I saw at the flower shows in Paris on June 5th 
and in London on June iSth, flowers which would be a credit in the 
great exhibition in New York today. 
I read during the war the French paper "Revue Horticole" and 
its columns seemed to be mostly devoted to enumerating the nursery- 
men who had been killed or wounded or cited in battle. It is some- 
what of a shock to an American who was used to certain French 
names in relation to a certain plant, to suddenly find that name appHed 
to some army ofl&cer who had died in battle. I remember distinctly 
when I had been in France but a short time the paper contained an 
account of a citation for bravery of Lieutenant Jean Viaud-Bruant. 
I had known this name for many years on a 5-inch wooden label in 
a pot of a splendid semi-double pink Geranium, and though I might 
vaguely have been expected to know that the Geranium had been 
named for a person, yet this name seemed to belong to a plant and 
not to a human being, and seemed entirely out of place in the army. 
I am glad I was able to visit these nurseries when I did for I was 
most hospitably treated everywhere, and an American going there 
today could hardly expect such treatment, for they feel and I beheve 
perfectly rightly, that they have a just grievance against us. When 
Quarantine 37 was first announced Auguste Dessert wrote to me and 
asked if it was possible that a friendly and allied nation such as 
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