_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 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."
_American_. And undying names--the lads' names.
_Englishman_. What they and the other Americans did can never die. Not while the planet endures. No nation at that time realized how vital was your country's entrance into the war. Three months later it would have been too late. Your young, untried forces lifted worn-out France and England and swept us to-victory. It was America's victory at the last. It is our glory to confess that, for from then on America has been our kin.
_American_. (_Smiles_.) England is our well-beloved elder sister for all time now.
_Englishman_. The soldiers who died there (_gestures to the ditch_) and their like did that also. They tied the nations together with a bond of common gratitude, common suffering, common glory.
_American_. You say well that there was common gratitude. England and France had fought our battle for three years at the time we entered the war. We had nestled behind the English fleet. Those grim gray ships of yours stood between us and the barbarians very literally.
_Englishman_. Without doubt Germany would have been happy to invade the only country on earth rich enough to pay her war debt. And you were astonishingly open to invasion. It is one of the historical facts that a student of history of this twenty-first century finds difficult to realize.