OCR Text |
Show w Magnificent New City j Is Rising From Dust of Ruined Armentieres Workmen Find Many Pockets of Mustard Gas and Numerous Unexploded Shells as They Dig Into the Debris. By PlOXrP GIBBS. New ur!; Time ("auk-. Copyright.) ARMi:NrPJKi:.S, ;ept. 27. Faith m;;;' certainly move rubbibh heupj, bs I taw today in the burning tunhhine v.Meli glared, down upon tho ruina of Armcntien . I In Arm ntier''h itself there are now v"0 people living, though I remember j a day im 1!'!7 v.!h;d, waii a ateel hat on nn head find a ga3 uia .k very handy, I j .fnt with one other man down streets, of ruin v hf re we walked clon to tbu j wall, listening with both cars cocked to ugly noi'-pa overhead and seeing not one human :ouI or any living thing in ! t Ins ugly littl" town. j That whs i.l't-T th das when the Germans finally abandoned the kind of trtif.- ihry had kept lo pare the place v h ilc n e spared f ' !c, and smashed it from -rvi lo e,id with high explosives and filled it with poion ga; from thousands thou-sands of helks. Si i hundred British o!dMir h.tc gasire.l at that 1 imo and civilians, mostly women and chil-dren, chil-dren, v.-lio,rt bodies were brought out from their cellars on doors and tnuttcrs bv men of the roval armv medical corps when the storm rased off a little. That uai th time of Arment iores 's agon-.'. n June of 1917 tin-re was not one liouo in the town w Inch remained undamaged, and two-thirds of the hnus-n and a'l the churches and sclioolsj anii fiw n hall and public buildings were just skeletons of masonry, gutted from roof to cellar. Scene of Placidity. So they sdoo today when I saw them again. Nevertheless, as I have said, mh(J people are back again. T saw many of tho women and girls sitting in the shadow of broken walla, knitting and sewing outside the ruins of their homes as placidly as though nothing had o-eurr"d. 1 parsed nome smartly dressed girls, real as ft new pin, parading down a at rcet which would have inspired Captain Cap-tain Buirnsfather as though it were the Boulevard des Italians, Paris. I j went into a little estaminet and over a bowl of admirable coffee, under a ceiling of brown paper, chatted with a man and woman who had come back to their home and started business again. They talked in a kind of duet, the bass voi'V of Ihe man and the shrill voice of the woman taking up the recital re-cital which contained all the tragedy of Armentieres and most of the drama of I tho war as it had passed through the souls of those two humble, brave, clear-eyed clear-eyed peasant folk. Mayor Giving Aid. But Armentieres is not sitting down in its ruin quite helplessly. Besides German prisoners at their forced labor poor wretches the men folk who have come back are clearing away rubbish rub-bish heaps ami getting down to foundations foun-dations and making ready; for a new town to rise. They have as their leader a man of energy, spirit and big ideas. It is M. Chas, their mayor, who has put up a number of wooden huts in the Grande place, opposite the remnant of his old town hall, and there, as I learned today from his assistant, ho is hard at work on the present and future and not thinking too much of the past. For the prcpent, with the help of the American Red Croec. which has done 20o worL-, he is orgau'.iiug tho food supply and health conditions, none too goon, of the h'JUO citizens "ho ha e come back. He is getting the v. ate r tupplv in order again. He has opened fccnoo's amid the ruins in wooden huts for 720 children, who are being taught, to their real joy, by their obi instructors, instruc-tors, after tio. first touching reunion. Out of tho i if ty-.-'-ven doth fnctorits w.-ho'ft helped to make the werlth ot A nnen t ie' i,, one is working again, and every toul in town is proud of that, and li:tens to the whirr cf its machinery machin-ery as a magic melody out of 'which will ccme the music of a new life. The famouj brassieres D 'Armentieres, which supplied the best beer in ) "ranee, are all destroyed, and nothing can be dojj; in that way yet, but the future has its pronises. Thinks in a Big Way. From what I hear of M. Chas. from lho-;e who serve him, ho is a man who thinks in a big w-iy and is more than a phrasernaker. He is a realist, facing facts, but his vision of the new cit'' of Armentieres. for which all the plans have been made, holds more of beauty than was in the town which has gone a town where many people lived in filthy little cottages, surrounded by squalor which debased them, lie is planning a fair city, with good houses for workers and pleasure gardens to which they may go after their toil. The financial tide of the vision is one of hard fact not to be ignored in a poet 'b dream. To wait until the , FVneh government can apportion a share to each city and village iu t he-devastated he-devastated regions of the indemnity from viermany, is to wait, it seems, un- i til the peopie are sick with despair' They are already feverish because so litt le is done. Another way is sug- I gested in the case of Armentieres. An American company has offered to advance a large amount of money as a loan out of which the new city may be buiit. A million and a half francs is the sum proposed, but that is an exaggerated figure, the interest of which vsould cripple the resources of the population of o7,0'.'U. although it would be guaranteed by the great manufacturers. Rising Out of Dust. But in the idea of some such town there may be the means of quick recovery, re-covery, and, somehow, by one means or another, the mayor of Armentieres, and the elders of the city are determined deter-mined that their vision shall rise in reality out of the dust. That is their dream, and the people have faith and courage in facing the future from the holes in the houses which are now their windows. As they dig, the workmen still find pockets of mustard gas, from which they retreat gasping, and as they clear away the bricks they find unexploded shells which burst at the touch of a pick and in cellars of ruins, which have been choked up, they find the bodies of fellow citizens whose liou&es were their tombs. The tragedy of the war is told by the stones about them. The writing on tlie walls is clear to read, but by work and faith the future holds fair promise when all the filth of war shall have been covered up and beauty will come to flower in this poor, stricken town of France. |