"Tres chic!" said the commandant to a group of soldiers proud to their
handicraft.
And chic also, though touching in its sentiment, was a little graveyard
behind a fringe of branches which mask a French battery. The
gunners were still at work plugging out shells over the enemy's lines,
from which came answering shells with the challenge of death, but
they had found time to decorate the graves of the comrades who had
been "unfortunate." They had twined wild flowers about the wooden
crosses and made borders of blossom about those mounds of earth.
It was the most beautiful cemetery in which I have ever stood with
bared head. Death was busy not far away. Great guns were speaking
in deep, reverberating tones, which gave a solemn import to the day;
but Nature was singing to a different tune.
"It is strange, is it not," said our commandant, "this contrast between
war and peace? Those cherry trees comfort one's spirit."
He was a soldier in every fibre of his being, but behind those keen,
piercing eyes of his there was the sentiment of France stirred now by
the beauty through which we passed, in spite of war. We drove for a
mile or more down a long, straight road which was an avenue of
cherry trees.
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