Joy in the Morning Part 2

_Third Schoolgirl_. Well, you see, Miss Hadley, we're fed up with solemn grounds. You can't expect us to go into raptures at this stage over an old ditch. And, to be serious, wouldn't some of those field flowers make a lovely combination for hats? With the French touch, don't you know?

You'd be darling in one--so _ingenue!_

_Second Schoolgirl_. Ss.h.!.+ She'll kill you. (_Three girls turn their backs and stifle a giggle_.)

_Teacher_. Girls, you may be past your youth yourselves one day.

_First Schoolgirl_. (_Airily._) But we're well preserved so far, Miss Hadley.

_Fourth Schoolgirl_. (_Has wandered away a few yards. She bends and picks a flower from the ditch. She speaks to herself_.) The flag floated here. There were sh.e.l.ls bursting and guns thundering and groans and blood--here. American boys were dying where I stand safe. That's what they did. They made me safe. They kept America free. They made the "world safe for freedom," (_She bends and speaks into the ditch_.) Boy, you who lay just there in suffering and gave your good life away that long-ago summer day--thank you. You died for us. America remembers.

Because of you there will be no more wars, and girls such as we are may wander across battle-fields, and nations are happy and well governed, and kings and masters are gone. You did that, you boys. You lost fifty years of life, but you gained our love forever. Your deaths were not in rain. Good-by, dear, dead boys.

_Teacher_. (_Calls_). Child, come! We must catch the train.

FOURTH ACT

_The scene is the same trench in the year 2018. It is three o'clock of the afternoon, of the same summer day. A newly married couple have come to see the trench. He is journeying as to a shrine; she has allowed impersonal interests, such as history, to lapse under the influence of love and a trousseau. She is, however, amenable to patriotism, and, her husband applying the match, she takes fire--she also, from the story of the trench_.

_He_. This must be the place.

_She_. It is nothing but a ditch filled with flowers.

_He_. The old trench. (_Takes off his hat_.)

_She_. Was it--it was--in the Great War?

_He_. My dear!

_She_. You're horrified. But I really--don't know.

_He_. Don't know? You must.

_She_. You've gone and married a person who hasn't a glimmer of history.

What will you do about it?

_He_. I'll be brave and stick to my bargain. Do you mean that you've forgotten the charge of the Blank_th_ Americans against the Prussian Guard? The charge that practically ended the war?

_She_. Ended the war? How could one charge end the war?

_He_. There was fighting after. But the last critical battle was here (_looks about_) in these meadows, and for miles along. And it was just here that the Blank_th_ United States Regiment made its historic dash.

In that ditch--filled with flowers--a hundred of our lads were mown down in three minutes. About two thousand more followed them to death.

_She_. Oh--I do know. It was _that_ charge. I learned about it in school; it thrilled me always.

_He_. Certainly. Every American child knows the story. I memorized the list of the one hundred soldiers' names of my own free will when I was ten. I can say them now. "Arnold--Ashe--Bennett--Emmet--Dragmore--"

_She_. Don't say the rest, Ted--tell me about it as it happened. (_She slips her hand into his_.) We two, standing here young and happy, looking forward to a, lifetime together, will do honor, that way, to those soldiers who gave up their happy youth and their lives for America.

_He_. (_Puts his arm around her_.) We will. We'll make a little memorial service and I'll preach a sermon about how gloriously they fell and how, unknowingly, they won the war--and so much more!

_She_. Tell me.

_He_. It was a hundred years ago about now--summer. A critical battle raged along a stretch of many miles. About the centre of the line--here--the Prussian Imperial Guards, the crack soldiers of the German army, held the first trench--this ditch. American forces faced them, but in weeks of fighting had not been able to make much impression. Then, on a day, the order came down the lines that the Blank_th_ United States Regiment, opposed to the Guard, was to charge and take the German front trench. Of course the artillery was to prepare for their charge as usual, but there was some mistake. There was no curtain of fire before them, no artillery preparation to help them. And the order to charge came. So, right into the German guns, in the face of those terrible Prussian Guards, our lads went "over the top" with a great shout, and poured like a flame, like a catapult, across the s.p.a.ce between them--No-Man's Land, they called it then--it was only thirty-five yards--to the German trench. So fast they rushed, and so unexpected was their coming, with no curtain of artillery to s.h.i.+eld them, that the Germans were for a moment taken aback. Not a shot was fired for a s.p.a.ce of time almost long enough to let the Americans reach the trench, and then the rifles broke out and the brown uniforms fell like leaves in autumn. But not all. They rushed on pell-mell, cutting wire, pouring irresistibly into the German trench. And the Guards, such as were not mown down, lost courage at the astounding impetus of the dash, and scrambled and ran from their trench. They took it--our boys took that trench--this old ditch. But then the big German guns opened a fire like hail and a machine gun at the end--down there it must have been--enfiladed the trench, and every man in it was killed. But the charge ended the war. Other Americans, mad with the glory of it, poured in a sea after their comrades and held the trench, and poured on and on, and wiped out that day the Prussian Guard. The German morale was broken from then; within four months the war was over.

_She_. (_Turns and hides her face on his shoulder and shakes with sobs_.) I'm not--crying for sorrow--for them. I'm crying--for the glory of it. Because--I'm so proud and glad--that it's too much for me. To belong to such a nation--to such men. I'm crying for knowing, it was my nation--my men. And America is--the same today. I know it. If she needed you today, Ted, you would fight like that. You would go over the top with the charging Blank_th_, with a shout, if the order came--wouldn't you, my own man?

_He_. (_Looking into the old ditch with his head bent reverently_.) I hope so.

_She_. And I hope I would send you with all my heart. Death like that is more than life.

_He_. I've made you cry.

_She_. Not you. What they did--those boys.

_He_. It's fitting that Americans should come here, as they do come, as to a Mecca, a holy place. For it was here that America was saved. That's what they did, the boys who made that charge. They saved America from the most savage and barbarous enemy of all time. As sure as France and England were at the end of their rope--and they were--so surely Germany, the victor, would have invaded America, and Belgium would have happened in our country. A hundred years wouldn't have been enough to free us again, if that had happened. You and I, dearest, owe it to those soldiers that we are here together, free, prosperous citizens of an ever greater country.

_She_. (_Drops on her knees by the ditch_.) It's a shrine. Men of my land, I own my debt. I thank you for all I have and am. G.o.d bless you in your heaven. (_Silence_.)

_He_. (_Tears in his eyes. His arm around her neck as he bends to her_.) You'll not forget the story of the Charging Blank_th_?

_She_. Never again. In my life. (_Rising_.) I think their spirits must be here often. Perhaps they're happy when Americans are here. It's a holy place, as you said. Come away now. I love to leave it in suns.h.i.+ne and flowers with the dear ghosts of the boys. (_Exit He and She_.)

FIFTH ACT

_The scene it the same trench in the year 2018. It is five o'clock of the same summer afternoon. An officer of the American Army and an English cabinet member come, together, to visit the old trench. The American has a particular reason for his interest; the Englishman accompanies the distinguished American. The two review the story of the trench and speak of other things connected, and it is hoped that they set forth the far-reaching work of the soldiers who died, not realizing their work, in the great fight of the Charging Blank_th.

_Englishman_. It's a peaceful scene.

_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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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."

_Englishman_. Those are undying words.

_American_. And undying names--the lads' names.