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Show : j AISNE A BLAZING VALE OF DEATH SAYS ENGLISH WAR CORRESPONDENT London. A correspondent of the Times, writing from behind the lines at Senlis and Chantilly, says: I have passed through a smiling land to a land wearing the mask of deaih; through harvest fields rich with great stacks snugly builded against the winter to the fields of a braver harvest; by jocund villages where there is no break in the ebb and flow of everyday life to villages and towns that despoiling hands have shattered in ruins. And I have passed up this Via Dolorosa Dolo-rosa toward the very harvesting itself it-self toward those great plains stretching away on the banks of the River Aisne, where the second act of this drama of battles is at this moment mo-ment being played. Details of this fight are very scanty, but partly from personal observation and rartly from information which has reached me I know that the struggle so far has been a terrible one, equal to, if not greater than, the struggle on the banks of the Marne. Battling for Life. The events of Monday revealed a foe battling desperately for his Hfe; and thiB defense of General von Kluck's army demanded of the allies, and is demanding, their utmost strength and determination. Picture this battlefield which before these lines are printed will assuredly have taken its place with that of the Marne as one of the greatest combats of the greatest war. Through the middle of it flows the great river, passing pass-ing from the east to the west. The banks of the river here are very steep. Above the plain, which sweeps away from the northern bank, rises the "massif" of Laon. It is an ideal area for great movements and for artillery work directed upon the valley of the river. Pass eastward a little, there are the heights behind the city of Reims and above the Vesle, a tributary tribu-tary of the Aisne. Here again nature has builded a stronghold eaBy to defend, de-fend, difficult exceedingly to attack. I know of heroic work against these great lines, work that will live with the most momentous of this struggle. I know of smashing attacks the thought of which takes one's breath away. I have heard narratives of the trenches and of the bridges these engineers, en-gineers, French and English, have indeed in-deed "played the game" which no man can hear unmoved; how the columns col-umns went down again and again to the blazing death of the valley, and how men worked, building and girding gird-ing in a very inferno worked with the furious speed of those whose time of work is short. Tells of Heroism. And in the trenches, too, the tale of heroism unfolds itself hour by hour. Here is an example, one among ten thousand, the story of a wounded private: "We lay together, my friend and I . . . the order to fire came. We shot and shot till our rifles burned us. Still they swarmed on towards us. We took careful aim all the while. 'Ah, good, did you see that?' I turned to my friend and as I did so heard a terrible dull sound like a spade striking strik-ing upon newly turned earth. His head was fallen forward. I spoke, I called him by name. He was moaning moan-ing a little. Then I turned to my work again. They are advancing quickly quick-ly now. Ah! how cool I was. I shot so slowly ... so very slowly. "And then do you know what it feels like to be wounded? I rose just a little too high on my elbow. A sting that pierces my arm like a hot wire too sharp almost to be sore. I felt my arm go away from me it seemed like that and then my rifle fell. I believe I was a little dazed. I looked at my friend presently. He was dead." Make Great Stand. So, on these green river banks and across these fair wooded plains the Germans make their great stand the stand that If they are defeated will be their last in France. And meanwhile behind them lie the wasted fields and the broken villages. It is impossible adequately to describe the scenes which I have witnessed on the line of the great retreat, "but here and there events have had place, which, in truth, cry to the heaven for report. Of such is the grim story of Senlis. I spent many hours In Senlis and I will recount that story as I saw it and as I heard it from those who lived through the dreadful procession of days. On Saturday, September 5, the Germans reached this beautiful old cathedral town and entered into occupation. occu-pation. They issued a proclamation to the inhabitants calling upon them to submit and to offer no sort of resistance re-sistance on pain of severe reprisals. People Are Reckless. But the inhabitants of Senlis had already al-ready tasted the bitter draft of German Ger-man war making. The people had become be-come bitter to the point of losing care of their own safety. They were reckless, reck-less, driven to distraction. Bitter was the price exacted for this recklessness! The trouble began on Tuesday when, exasperated beyond measure by the invaders, a brave tobacconist to-bacconist declared to a couple of the Prussians: "I serve men, not bullies." Hi; followed his words with a blow delivered de-livered fiercely from the shoulder. The infuriated soldiers dragged him from his shop and hurled him on his knees in front of the door. His wife rushed out shrieking for mercy. A shot rang out. . . . Another. . . . Man and wife lay dead. . Immediately the news of this act flew through the town. Outraged and furious, the conquerors marched instantly in-stantly to the house of the mayor their hostage and arrested him. They conveyed him without a moment's delay de-lay to the military headquarters, where he was imprisoned for the night. On Wednesday morning a court-martial court-martial sat to decide his fate. A few minutes later this brave man paid for the .indiscretion of his people with his life, dying splendidly. Relieved by Turcos. And then guns were turned on this town of living men and women and children. Shells crashed into the houses, into the shops, into the station. sta-tion. At Chantilly, seven kilometers away, the amazed inhabitants saw a great column of black smoke curl up into the air; they guessed the horrible truth. Senlis was burning. The work, however, was interrupted. interrupt-ed. At midday the glad tidings were heard, "The Turcos are here." Within With-in the hour broken and blazing Sen lis was relieved and rescued. The Turcos pursued and severely punished pun-ished the enemy. Today these streets are terrible to look upon. House after house has been shattered to pieces broken to a pile of stones. One Big Heartache. London. The Westminster Gazette publishes a letter from a correspondent correspond-ent who obtained special permission to visit the Aisne battlefields. The letter does not deal with the military mili-tary operations. The writer says: "The whole district northeast of Paris is one big heartache. Imagine driving in an automobile through the lovely roads of France, with the harvests ripe and trees laden heavily with fruit and everywhere in the fields, on the roadside, on hill and In valley, sitting and lying, are not harvesters, har-vesters, nor holiday-makers, nor happy idlers, but dead men, stiff and stark, covering the fair fields. Dead Stand In Trenches. "Men In uniform lay or sat or stood as they were shot or had fallen from mortal wounds. Until I saw with my own eyes dead men standing or leaning lean-ing stiff against their fellows in the trenches and actually against the earth of the trenches Itself, I had not believed the stories that had reached Paris of this fact. "It is impossible to conceive a nightmare night-mare more hldesus. "At a small village at no great distance dis-tance from Cotterets we came upon a German surgeon, assisted by a French Red Cross nurse, operating in an open yard with several Prussian wounded, but most of the cases were past saving, sav-ing, although undoubtedly all that was humanly possible with the limited means at his disposal was being done. Two British officers near by also were being attended to, but scant hope was entertained of their recovery. "An undeniable fact is that both the English and French armies .ire particularly scrupulous In their treatment treat-ment of German wounded." Suffer, Defying Death. London. A picture of the sufferings suffer-ings of the German troops, cramped in miles of underground trenches and galleries along the Aisne river, is given giv-en by the Paris correspondent of the Daily Mail. He says that the autumnal weather, with its warm sunshine in the daytime, day-time, damp nights, and bitterly cold dawns, is extremely trying to the men, who are compelled to' spend every minute in the same section of the damp, depressing trenches. Alarms Occur Often. If the men step from their trenches to the level ground, they do so at the risk of their lives. At night the chances of an unexpected unex-pected attack from the allies' infantry are so great that every German soldier sol-dier must be at his post in the narrow ditch which is his home and defense, sleeping as best he may with his rifle at his side, ready to spring up at any moment at the alarms which come very frequently these dark, cloudy nights. The nerves of the sentries are sorely sore-ly tried. They mistake the most innocent in-nocent sounds for French infantry creeping up. When a sentry, tricked by his nerves, fires his rifle he brings the whole advanced post up at double quick, and It finds that there has been a false alarm. |