while all the world is waiting for spring there lie great spaces in one of the pleasantest lands to which spring cannot come.
pear trees and cherry and orchards flash over other lands, blossoming as abundantly as though their wonder were new, with a beauty as fresh and surprising as though nothing like it before had ever adorned countless centuries. now with the larch and soon with the beech trees and hazel, a bright green blazes forth to illumine the year. the slopes are covered with violets. those who have gardens are beginning to be proud of them and to point them out to their neighbours. almond and peach in blossom peep over old brick walls. the land dreams of summer all in the youth of the year.
but better than all this the germans have found war. the simple content of a people at peace in pleasant countries counted for nothing with them. their kaiser prepared for war, made speeches about war, and, when he was ready, made war. and now the hills that should be covered with violets are full of murderous holes, and the holes are half full of empty meat tins, and the garden walls have gone and the gardens with them, and there are no woods left to shelter anemones. boundless masses of brown barbed wire straggle over the landscape. all the orchards there are cut down out of ruthless spite to hurt france whom they cannot conquer. all the little trees that grow near gardens are gone, aspen, laburnum and lilac. it is like this for hundreds of miles. hundreds of ruined towns gaze at it with vacant windows and see a land from which even spring is banished. and not a ruined house in all the hundred towns but mourns for some one, man, woman or child; for the germans make war equally on all in the land where spring comes no more.
some day spring will come back; some day she will shine all april in picardy again, for nature is never driven utterly forth, but comes back with her seasons to cover up even the vilest things.
she shall hide the raw earth of the shell holes till the violets come again; she shall bring back even the orchards for spring to walk in once more; the woods will grow tall again above the southern anemones; and the great abandoned guns of the germans will rust by the rivers of france. forgotten like them, the memory of the war lord will pass with his evil deeds.
