nothing but ugly blotches were white and beautiful. Ammunition dumps,
horrible in their suggestion of death, seemed now to have been covered
over and hidden by some kindly hand of love. The great brown-bronzed
hills, the fortifications filled with death and horror were gleaming
white in the morning sunlight.

I said to the other driver: "Well, it's too beautiful to be true, isn't
it? It's a shame to think that when we get back from the front it will
all be gone, melted, and the old mud and dirt will be back again."

"Yes, but it means something to me," he said.

"What does it mean?"

"It means the future."

"What are you talking about, man?"

"Why, it means that some day this land will be beautiful again. It
means that, impossible as that idea seems, the war will cease, that
people will till these fields again, that grass will grow, that flowers
will bloom in these fields again, that people will come back to their
homes in peace. It is symbolical of that great white peace that will
come forever, when the ugly thing we call war will be buried so deeply
underneath the white blanket of peace and brotherhood that the world
will know war no more. It's like a rainbow to me. It is a promise."

I had never heard Tom grow so eloquent before, and what he said sounded
Christian. It sounded like man's talk to me. It was the dream of the
Christ I knew. It was the dream of the prophets of old. It was