Page:Our Girls.pdf/137

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THE DAY OF PEACE
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it goes by day the very earth seems to know of it, and if by night the darkness seems to hear and the morning light to tell of it. I see twenty million of men on the long line that used to be their battlefront, breaking up with joyous cries, now that the thunder of the guns has ceased, and turning north, south, east and west, but always towards home. I see our own armies coming westward, war-weary, perhaps, but full of cheer. I see them travelling by train through the desolate country which has been laid waste for the next ten years at least by a Niagara of shells, but is to be known henceforward to history as the scenes of splendid victories. I see the life of the world already beginning again. I see a man ploughing a field that is not yet cleared of broken guns, shattered gun-carriages, and tangled masses of barbed wire; a woman milking her cow in a half-roofed cow-house, and children playing among the piled-up stones of a village street where less than