American
(Advances to the side of the ditch. Looks down. Takes off his cap.) I came across the ocean to see it. (He looks over the fields.) It's quiet.
Englishman
The trenches were filled in all over the invaded territory within twenty-five years after the war. Except a very few kept as a manner of monument. Object-lessons, don't you know, in what the thing meant. Even those [pg 027] are getting obliterated. They say this is quite the best specimen in all France.
American
It doesn't look warlike. What a lot of flowers!
Englishman
Yes. The folk about here have a tradition, don't you know, that poppies mark the places where blood flowed most.
American
Ah! (Gazes into the ditch.) Poppies there. A hundred of our soldiers died at once down there. Mere lads mostly. Their names and ages are on a tablet in the capitol at Washington, and underneath is a sentence from Lincoln's Gettysburg speech: "These dead shall not have died in vain, and government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."