TRICOLOUR FLOWERS.
The choice of flowers may have peculiar appropriateness. A certain colonel, who was also a fine classical scholar, showed me during the War a very beautiful little verse that he had written under inspiration of the flowers along the edge of the trench. I wonder if anyone has preserved a copy ? He brought me, after the inspiration came upon him, a number of flowers to identify. They were miserable tumbled bits that had reposed for some while in the pockets of his tunic ; but the specimen of which he was most doubtful proved to be nothing rarer than a milfoil. This, with poppies and corn- flowers, made a tricolour ; and on this theme the verse was built. Very much about the same date—so far as I remember —an ardent collector for the Red Cross wrote to me for help in organizing the collection of seed from wild flowers in the War area to sell for the funds. On the same subject the Belgians found a suggestion of their national flag in the mass of yellow charlock and red poppy that grew beside the black of their burned buildings. This was a flourish set on that famous rhetorical figure : " The gold of our spirit between the black of our ruins and the red of our blood."
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