GARDEN OF THE DEAD.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 March 1919, Page 5

GARDEN OF THE DEAD.

TO COVER THE BATTLEFIELD. Addressing the Pilgrims of the United States on Britain's Day, Sir John Foster said:— Sometimes people come to me and say, 'ls it true that over in France and in Flanders the poppies grow over the dead '('" It is true. Those of us who have been up the valley of the Sonvme, have been along the great stretches of the fighting line, know, indeed, how there are little mounds there with the poppies waving above them; know how you will find the stretches or groups of .graves; how in front of the torn and broken lines the brave men have been laid to sleep, and over them the poppies grow. Sinco the Armistice has been signed my mind travels awey across the Atlantic to that great stretch of land where for years guns used to reverberate, and now all is silent. The people are wondering what they are going to do in that region. There are many courteous, generous Americans on >vhose part it would be a gracious act if they found the means whereby those torn towns and (hose disrupted villages could be brought into their own again. I know there are many French people who believe it would be better if instead of that a great forest were allowed to grow over the mightiest cemetery in the world; but, casting my mind back to tho scenes of the fighting, which are very real in ray vision, 1 sometimes picture that it would be well that that great land where lie so many of our brave dead were made into a Garden of the Brave. I would like to see, and I do see sometimes, in my vision the flowers of America growing over where lie' so many of your nnllaiitj sons. . .',■ I know there will be mighty stretches'" of fleur-dn-lys marking the sleeping place of 1,500,000 brave Frenchmen. I would like to fee the blooms of Be-kium nodding over the graves where brave Belgians sleep, and I know that out there I would like to see a mighty avenue of maple trees, all glorious with their crimson and with their'gold, telling the place where the Canadians rest and there will be mighty masses of the wonderful Australian wattle (shotting where the Australians are Bleepina- ves . and I know that out there, too will be" ; great leaves of green, tho shamrock coverlet for the brave Irish; and there will be roses everywhere, the white rose and red rose, the roses of Old England |of Lancaster imd of York tolling i*l.'