red roses, and forget-me-nots. His eyes were fixed on the statue. He did not see the old men and women there to receive the flowers. He pressed past them and with his own young hands laid his humble offering at the feet of the recovered city. He looked up at the statue and his lips moved. He could not have been more unconscious if he had been entirely alone in an Alsatian forest. The expression of his beautiful young face was such that a hush of awe fell on those who saw him.
An old woman in black took his hand in hers and said: "You are from Alsace?"
"I escaped from Strasbourg to join the French army," he said, "and all my family are there." His eyes brimmed, his chin quivered.
The old woman made a noble gesture of self-forgetting humanity. She took him in her arms and kissed him on both cheeks. "You are my son," she said.
They all crowded around him, taking his hand. "And my brother!" "And mine!" "And mine!"
The tears ran down their cheeks.
ARMISTICE DAY, 1926
BY LUCIA TRENT
Let us evoke no phantom throng
