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Show I TRENCH YOUTH I I WRITE OF WAR ' Children of Devastated Regions Pen Their Observations. I ORIGINAL AMD INIEBESTIHB Little Peasant In Primary School! 3 Who Saw the War Tell What They 1 I Remember of It and What They 8 Thought Valuable to the Future VlMtr Historian ai Well at to the Ptychot. jv-W fllt of the Preeent Letters Show i, I I Remarkable Gift of Observation. r I (Journay-sur-Aronde M a township i of 700 people, situated In the Olio t I department n .short distance from 1-iis- - a'sny and Itcison-sur-Matz, (ine nf i H those villages which linvo known for H four years the worst devastation, the , H worst misery. H A short time nso, while vlsltlnc Ihp H ruins of I.nsslRiiy nnil Its "Country . H Community Center," I expressed re- H grot that nobody, neither the director '. of primary Instruction nor any school H Inspector In, the devastated regions, find thought of conducting a kind nf H Inquest written hy the children of these rcfilons; of asking tbo little s H peasants In the primary schools who r H lind seen the war what they remem-t remem-t H bered of It and whnt they thought. I H thought that some future historian, as H well ns some psychologist, at present H might And In some thousands of these Bj compositions a llttto library of a very jH orlglnnl type and of the highest value. v jH If. Delncourt, schoolmaster at Oour- . H tiny-sur-A rondo, knight of the Legion H of Honor, nnd nn ex-soldler who had 9 ' '"''' cnme ,inck to Iils ",tle Bcno' B from the front, read our suggestion In H the Primary Kducntlon Itevlew, found It H Kim and has utilized It In his classes. Hj A fcy trays later I received, with a 1 Hi Krntip nf composition1), the following i H letter: 1 I A Nlne-Year-0ld Historian H "I am sending you the compositions 1 WB Just us they were hnuded In, without . H correcting cither grnmmnr or spelling. , HI I must ask you to make many allow- Us nnccs for my poor children. They P H -were compelled to flee twice beforo the 4 H enutny, some of them three times, i H Since tlicy have been shifted about B from one cud of France to the other H they have hardly been to school ; most H of them Old not even- know" how to H rend n year ago." 5 I The youngest of nil Is Maximo IMc- jird, nine years old, who. lind n big ' I brother killed In tho war. The teach- T I or has taught him the events he could 4 not remember. He knows whnt the victory of the Mnrnc Is, but his own ' memories: begin only at 1010, when he was flye years old. He remembers L "' return to the village after the W exodus of 1QM. 'Jn 1010 we cnme hack to stny In our house. It whs destroyed." At seven, In 10IS, Mjjxlnie Plcnrtl wn struck by the disorder of the 1 fields, where people lind dug trenches, whero they had brought tables nnd 1 made llstehlug posts nlong thPtpnrn- Ipet, "little holes for one man dug nlong the edges." Hut the schoolboy tells us that "the countrj Is grndunlly lielng repaired," nnd since nt the moment mo-ment he was finishing his composition the teacher probably wns speaking of the loan, he remembered his master's xplnnntlons, which form the end of Ms theme. "France has suffered severely because be-cause she had not enough money to I my for her soldiers and munitions nnd It Is for this we shonld love her, nnd lend her money to pny whnt she owes to foreign countries." Thls-nt nlneyenrs oldl Child's View of the War. Louis Lcfevrc Is ten: "In 1011 pnpn was mobilized. Wo heard the cannon roaring far. a way. Three days later wchad to leave with almost nothing. We couldn't take anything, any-thing, ns there wns no room In the cnrrhige. At night wc heard airplanes palling over our heads,, we heard gun Hhots, we had to go to bed all dressed. One night we had to go to bed In the street tlhlans were passing nnd wo left for the Selne-Inferleure. The next day the country wns taken hy tho (3er- am uitMin. j They fled to Neufchnlel,, then toi Ij , Dieppe, "on the shore of tlio Atlantic j! ocean". The youngster, too young to' gg remember himself, tells what his par-i f ents told him about this journey, but,! it like Maximo Plcard, ho remembers his' It emotions on returning, "burned chnlrs,' 1 with tho ashes still there," and that the goat had stayed In tho stable ; , Mnrcel Dcnnln, eleven yours old, took things with less philosophy, He 1 i had seen war nnd understood It. And.i ; with u good, small, firm handwriting,' ; ho knows already how to nnrrute, audi observes the beginning of tho bom-J bom-J banlmcnt of his village with a sol dier's coolness. "I noticed that after the cannon Are of the Clertuniis black clouds formed, ) (Si wul,p ,IU French fc'nns nuulo white 9 ' ones." |