FLOWERS AS PEACE AGENTS.
A delightful and suggestive variant of Voltaire's, II faut cultiver noire jardin, was given the other day by Lord Bridge- man at one of the two great flower shows to which the north- western folk resort in their tens of thousands at this season. He indicated statistically that this immense flocking to flower shows began in 1919, and suggested that it was reaction from the War ; and made the suggestion that nothing could do more service to the establishment of a reign of peace than the cultivation of flowers. This random flower of speech has perhaps more in it than may be thought. As an illus- tration, may I give one small contribution to the secret history of the War ? Throughout those nightmare years one of our English botanists communicated constantly with a German botanist through the agency of a Dutch botanist ; and the two faced the risk of awkward inferences solely for the sake of telling each other the flowering dates of certain plants that they had previously agreed to watch and record !
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