PASSCHENDAELE

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 7, 4 October 1920, Page 5

PASSCHENDAELE

(Contributed.) Thtes years to.-day sinco that memorable "stunt" when so many of our lads WTOte good-bye in their diaries. Burning with high hopes they sot off in the grey early dawn after a night when a full moon had brought intervals of peace and beauty oven to that hell spot. In other parts that glorious full moon was shining on a sea harassed by submarines, rejoicing in its help in detecting their prey, and on the ships the watch looked longingly for a cloud to obscure them, but no cloud obscured that exquisite night ■in the Mediterranean—alas, tint man should have been driven to wish it.

And now Passchendaele is a fertile spot again except in the immediate battle area where the ground is eo shell-holed that only coarse vegetables, wild flowers, and "ifla/okberriea possess it, and the old shell holes are all filled with bullrushes. At intervals are small graveyards or occasionally in fields or isolated spots are crosses, perhaps with a Bosche helmet on tfcem, l'or the same care is not givon in removing them to cemeteries. Apart from those war indications and the vivid reminder in tho ragged old German railway carriages still bearing German notices, the country is the epitome of peace with most luxuriant crops ot corn "nearly all cut," iields of tobacco, Uax and beans. For miles around the Ypres salient there is not a single live tas, not ono with any evidence of sprouting. The old Government wooden buildings and the hissen huts ara dottod about and house the inhabitants— some are raised on brick-work, or covered with ore ipera and look home-like anil comfortable. And so peace has come over the land and the healing hand of kind Mother Nature 'has transformed that inferno of mud and turmoil into fertile, productivo land. Has nature's healing hand not also held sway over us. and wrought in us a like marvel of peace and a harvest of development. The harvest is not yet ripe, but it is com-

UIJJ. "Mort pour son P.itrie," is on the grave of ovary French soldier. What liner fate can wo ask for our best and dearest? Have our"unroturning bravo" died in vainf No, a thousand time# no. Our richest heritage and the

heritage of our children's ohildren is to be found in'those fields in Flanders. Those giftves are the breastworks of an Empire, tho firmer and tho more iniprosive in that they «to tho graves of her colonial sons who left all that was dear thousands of miles behind them that ihe.v might establish their son6hip in helping her in hei" hour of need and in her light for freedom. Can ft child liavd a better inheritance than that one of the unretuming bravo is 'his immediate possession? Surely pride' greater than tho pride of • any aristocracy is legitimately his, and "noblesso oblige" lmist be his watchword for all time. To-day let our go to those widowed and fatherless; not only thoughts of pity, but also of a kind of envy that they have a direot inheritance in what can only como to many as part of a grent national inheritance' of which evory member of the Empire is proud.