color. But the weakness of the discolored leaves has spoiled the set- 
ting of tufty green. The gardener must renounce his yearly joy in 
the globes of red springing from emerald bouquets. With his patient 
fingers he feels the plants to see if a little life remains. Their wound is 
irreparable. The poisoned gases launched the night before by the 
Germans have, even twelve kilometers away, attacked the verdure. 
The war, after killing men, kills the Spring. Nearer the fight than 
this garden, on the land which the obstinate peasant cultivates to 
the very trenches, the young pasturage is all lost. Flocks he dead 
on the new grass. The fetid cloud, mounting to the sun, has gnawed 
the fresh green shoots. The teeming fields, where the flowers of May 
rejoice amid the starting grasses, have perished in the deadly breath 
of the war. The people of this land have seen the clear flames of 
distant farms fired by incendiary bombs, by day, bright shafts amidst 
black smoke, by night, bursting sparks high up in the darkness. They 
have known dead, shattered bodies and shell-crumbled houses. 
And here is the assassination of all growing things. Devastating 
humanity has one thing more to learn : how to destroy the light of day. 
The patient gardener reviews the misfortunes of his wounded 
garden. Only the green is destroyed. The flowers are still alive. 
His dear Forget-me-nots are yet blue above their wilted foliage. 
The young green vegetables, the tiny shoots from the roots, the 
fragile lettuces seem dead for lack of water in a damp country 
where green things are happy in constant humidity. 
The old gardener is accustomed to a house shaken night and day by 
the detonations of artillery. But the gases have sapped his courage. 
Yesterday life was evil in that dangerous air and he had felt a desire to 
go away where the air was sweet and the poison of the war was left 
behind. Tired and broken, he had said, "I will go." This morning 
he said, "I stay!" 
He puzzles over the best way to protect his plants; perhaps straw, 
as against frost, or sprinkling with a protective liquid, — he makes plans 
for the struggle to come. He no longer hears the cannon or the rush 
of the Red Cross trucks sweeping past his hedge laden with the seri- 
ously wounded or those whom the gases have killed. 
He had not failed through all the long war to do for his garden all 
that he had done in the years before. After the German cavalry had 
kept their horses there in 1914 he had repaired the ravages they had 
wrought. He had remade his garden as beautiful as before. His 
spade clinked against bomb casings fallen among his treasured plants. 
This one spot he guards in perfection and says: "There's enough of 
this war. If everybody quit his work, then what would happen?" 
