_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 shells 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