Beyond the stately cemeteries of France, across Italy, through
Eastern Europe in well-nigh unbroken chain they stretch, passing
over the holy Mount of Olives itself to the furthest shores of the
Indian and Pacific Oceans--from Zeebrugge to Coronel, from Dunkirk
to the hidden wildernesses of East Africa.
"But in this fair land of France, which sustained the utmost fury
of the long strife, our brothers are numbered, alas! by hundreds
of thousands.
"They lie in the keeping of a tried and generous friend, a
resolute and chivalrous comrade-in-arms, who with ready and quick
sympathy has set aside for ever the soil in which they sleep, so
that we ourselves and our descendants may for all time reverently
tend and preserve their resting-places.
"And here, at Terlinchthun, the shadow of his monument falling
almost across their graves, the greatest of French soldiers--of
all soldiers--stands guard over them. And this is just, for side
by side with the descendants of his incomparable armies they
defended his land in defending their own.
"Never before in history have a people thus dedicated and
maintained individual memorials to their fallen, and, in the
course of my pilgrimage, I have many times asked myself whether
there can be more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the
years to come than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to
the desolation of war.
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