Show N WAKE WAItE OF f 4 HUN It IN FRANCE Nothing But Desolation WHere Prosperous Villages Smil Smiled d. d FLATTEN OUT GUT EVEN SCRAPS wT One Can Motor for Hours In Region Now Known as British Front and See Nothing But Ruins of What Used to Be Human Habitations Habitations- People Hide In Cellars Lest Boche Bocho Shells Find Them Out By FREDERIC WILLIAM WILE of of the Vigilantes S Somewhere In la France France I I never nevert t Imagined In the wildest flights of fany fancy fanCy fan- fan cy y about war that to gain an objective rw under modern battle conditions an army has not to lay to-lay lay waste a position or a village but practically a n countryside country country- side You can motor nowadays s for r hours In the region generally known as the British front sweep the landscape landscape land land- for miles In every direction and andr r eee see nothing but ruins of what used to tobe tobe ii be human habitations Your guides point to a n scattered dump of brick mortar twisted timbers Indiscriminate t nate rubbish of all sorts lining either side Bide of the roadway along which you are spinning Here and there at irregular Irregular Ir ir- regular intervals the bare charred remains remains remains re re- mains of what once were trees stick sUck stickup up from amid the debris and the chaos There Is not a n suggestion of a II standing wall anywhere nor even of a II aK K door cr Cl window frame and of course ourse no semblance of a n roof There arc only cellars Into which houses shops slops churches Cs stores schools schools everything everything have t have been thrown into a n crazy hoW hold f all nIl of a l. l wide town grave We Vc arc are now going through remarks our military chaperone la- la Y conic ily and we recognize the name of a n place Blare prominent In the fighting k- k during some Important push weeks or months ago now ago now wiped from the face facu of f the earth as effectually as If it x t. t honest French peasants and villagers had had never striven through the generations generations genera genera- t lions to make a comfortable abode for themselves and theirs One bopes lopes that the ministering angels permitted them to evacuate the town before them their homes bomes were splintered and crushed by byI I 15 15 Inch inch death One wonders l' l how many human remains ma may still sun lIed lie d t.- t. burled buried beneath the wreckage of If beams 2 and sandstone One speculates whether men women and children who ho contrived d to escape the shells will willever I i ever again be able to start life with q their dwellings places of business s and cultivated fields s mangled and devas- devas tatted One Is is- persuaded p that stupendous dous dom as is the work of destruction wrought by twentieth century warfare the task of reconstruction will be 1 enormously more gigantic still sUlI Towns that took look years to make have been shot to to pieces in an hour ti Last Word in Perforation K t I have ye hen heard Id I'd of towns in our own own wild an and wooly West that tuat have been lleen the thelast shot But nut Is surely last wor word in complete and scientific j perforation In July 1 1914 14 it was a happy thriving community of t or Inhabitants a smiling town with a wonderful Grand place and a picturesque Petit place a noble Gothic cathedral and a splendid town ton hall t G Hound the Grand place ran tt 11 u quadrangle quadrangle quad quad- rangle of colonnaded houses houes of surpassing sur stir passing ln architectural beauty For the tho thorest it rest the town was wa typically French b by which I mean a 11 complex of neat stores and dwelling houses churches s and factories schools and estaminets J- J cares cafes Today there Is not a solitary r budding of any kind In the whole town that Is not HOt entirely or partially wreck wreck- ked k- k ed Th There Thre re ia it not a n single thing of wood brick or stone that t is intact Not Nt more than l. l 1500 OO or 2000 people le live there now and they must hide in cellars most of the time lest Bocha a sh shells lIs search them out Death links t In every very street even though the BritIsh British Brit Brit- ish have held it for more than two sears and have extended their lines lades be ond It considerably during the past few months Though they have long since turned turne the town Into scraps of Its former s self lf the Germans seem filled 4 with an nn Insatiable lust to to flatten out oute e even en n the scraps You walk through the Grand place hugging bugging close to the walls wails by order of your army guide In perpetual danger that a souvenir from l Krupps will land at your feet and send fragments r of you OU flying into tho the 1 ethereal eternal But nut you ou are only living the life Ufe that the British garrison find and indomitable little civilian rearguard rearguard rear rear- z guard of 1500 or 2000 people people mostly mostly old men and women too fragile to seek seeka a safer abode further behind the lines Unes r tire are living day in and day out Museum of German Savagery This thought occurred to me while the tumbled down cathedral r. r mince town hall ball and the F limitless field of desolation and devastation devas devas- tation cation lying all aU around them at every turning Why not keep it just as It is today to a n pile of glorious ruins as a p world museum of German savagery 5 WIlY Why not leave it stricken battered i and Dd maimed in its every structural limb Just as we saw it this day three 1 years after for the admonition horror and Instruction of a 11 uni universe erse which S V-as V rushed to arms anus for for- forthe the overthrow of fit liberty's foe toe There will be vast libraries of of- documentary evidence of i S the he Huns' Huns atrocities to educate and andA A terrify po posterity But what hat are books stud and descriptions and find t proofs roots compared e to such an ail ocular dente J- J r I as threatened to loose the II I I tear tear- tear ducts of five prosaic American observers today I was born and raised in an nn Indiana town very ery much like Uke dozens dozens' of French towns which have been crushed beneath beneath beneath be be- neath neath the merciless heel of the German nr army army There are Illinois and Iowa lown and Michigan and Wisconsin towns justn just n them too I thought of those towns to this afternoon I said to myself myself myself my my- I self that If Essen's Inch 17 murder murder- guns could ever be plant planted d within range of our own smiling Western communities the kaiser and his bis Germans Germans Germans Ger Ger- mans would splinter them as gladly ns S ruthlessly as completely as they have demolished this b beautiful town Pershing's men are arc here to help save France But nut with every blow they strike to th that t noble nohle end they are arc strIking striking ing lag to save our own Arrases Bai nn and from the fate which has overtaken Frances France's La La- portes Davenports Davenports Daven ports and Battle Creeks 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