Evening Star Newspaper, November 26, 1922, Page 73

BY FRANK G. CARPENTER. SOMEWHERE IN Somewhere in North France, 19 HIS is a film show of France rising out of the ruins. * Your seat i3 beslde me In a French automobile, and our motion- Picture camera in front is worked by the motor. We shall pull out the slide as we wish and write the sena- rio as we travel along. Our speed will be rapid, for these French cauf- fours are Jehus, and they “drive furi- ously.” But we shall jump from place to place without regard to seography and shall stop where we please, increasing the text on the screen as human interest directs. Most of our snapshots will be of the country, which just now is carpeted with alfalfa, wheat. oats, rye, crim- son clover and beets, embroidered with red popples as big as a teapot and of all the colors God made for the changing hues of His footstool. We shall find few blots on the land- Every fleld, road and forest is “dressed up to the nines,” and the whole is llke a new Paris gown. I love my 6wn country, but 1 do not see how any Frenchman can help loving France. The patches of devastation accentu- ate the beauty of the new recreation. On the chalky hillsides shell holes are still left, and near the battleflelds the trees are like a dead forest in Alaska where the fire has swept through. But this is only in the “red zone." where the ruin was so great that the Rovernment cannot afford to restore it. There the dead orchards and trees stand as skeleton monuments of the past and weeds grow at wili upon the mine craters. Rusty barbed wire and iron are lying about, but the grass is sprouting among them, trying to cover the waste, and Wwithin a few vears' there will be no signs of war. It must be remembered, however, that the patches making up the “red zone” cover hundreds of thousands of acres. They are all hills and hollows. There are great rents in the ground and the huge excavations blown out by the mines make one think of exinct vol- «gnoes. The trees which are to be sen everywhere else have been shaved off by the war. Nevertheless, in 1914 that zone was as rich as these crops we are now riding through. Its roads were vast arbors, where tall poplars met over- head and shut out the sun and one passed towns and villages at every few turns of the wheels. Now there is nothing but thin grass, daisies. wild Poppies and weeds. Some places are as barren as the Sahara. By the roadside are the trunks of trees cut down by the Germans, or it may have been by the allies themselves for mili- tary reasons. This snap is made in 0ld Picardy, where the Somme rivér flows. This department is a plateau. in some places 500 feet high. It is a blanket of gravel and clay with chalk underneath. We can see the chalk cropping out of the hills, and the mine craters are white. In one chalk “BANKS OF THE MARNE AT CHATEAU-THIERRY—CONSECRATED GROUND TO ALL AMERICANS. WHERE OUR TROOPS, IN 1918, CHECKED bank, along the roadside, above some bales of barbed wire, I counted six shells. * %k Xk X S we ride on we pass through vil- lage after village in all stages of rebullding. Some are miserable, some prosperous, but the meanest is the be- loved home of a peasant who lived there before the war wiped out the town, and he is bound to come back. The government offers new land and new houses where the people will be better off than before, but they retuse to leave. Take, for instance, the re- building of Belloy-en-Santerre, the village near where Alan Seeger was killed. You will remember his poems, among the best written during the war, and especially that which begins, “I have a rendesvous with death.” Well, it was at Belloy-en-Santerre that death met him and made the town a mud hole. The government has refused to rebuild it, and has of- fered each of its families ten acres of land, with good barns and buildings, in a more fertile region not far away. The peasants will not accept, and they are now living in shacks and dugouts until they can save enough to re- Carpenter Tells Where Alan Seeger Had His Rendezvous With Death and Joyce Kilmer Sleeps in a Treeless Grave—Visit to Quentin Roosevelt’s Beautiful Resting Place—The Work of America in Rebuilding France—What the Red Cross, American Committee and the Quakers Have Done—Miss Belle Skinner’s New Town and its Pot of Gold—Remaking Coucy-Le- Thateau, Built When Attila and His Huns Destroyed Old Rome—Film Shots of North France i| From an Automobile. |bulld. Already several houses of {brick and stone have gone up, and | their lands are-being worked on the { co-operative principle In wheat and | oat flelds, each of which contains fifty | acres or more. The town folk own a | tractor and other farm machinery in common and are producing larger crops than In 1914, The peasants will probably erect huge barns of brick. roofed with red tiles, such as stand |amid the grain in other parts of the |new agricultural regions, crimson 1andmarks of the reconstruction that has been going on since the armistice. The new village will be like the old |one, excert that it will have to con- i form to tae buildiag regulations now laid dowe<t by the government. T ! French ant de not want mod ern hovaes, and he abominates the big | windows and the sanit methods v | which our people . As a result | the government has had to insist tha | none of the towns adopted by Ameri cans or others shall be put up excep in accord with the government plan; I have talked with Miss Belle Skin- | ner of Holyoke, Mass., who Is spend- ing something like $250,000 in re- | building the little town of Hatton- | chatel, in the Meuse. She has prac- { tically no control over the reconstruc- tion, although she has done much by hygienic. 1 do not believe that could design a doorstep and have i approved, and as for putting in big | windows anrd bathrooms, the peopl { object. that the men digging the new founda- tions discovered a great pot of coln; which they gave to Miss Skinner. The colns were the savings of a French peasant of ages ago. They were of all denominations, and some of them were colned in the middle ages. T was one of the numismatic finds of the century, and Miss Skinner has | given some of the ancient pieces of | money to the National Museum in | Paris. EE R I ND just here I wish to pay a tribute to Alan Sceger, the boy who, of all others, perhaps. best tyT | fies the spirit of our American youth during the world war. He was a | child of four when I first met his { father and mother in Mexico City in 1892, and was just twenty-eight when {in a bayonet charge on the German trenches in Belloy-en-Santerre he w. {Kkilled. It was only several wee {after the war broke out that he e tered the French Foreign Legion, in {which he fought to the day of his death. Reared in the lap of luxu |schooled in the United States and | France, a graduate of Harvard, and | closely assoctated with the best in- | tellectuals of Paris, before the war | came his name had become known as | a poet through his “Juvenilia. With no knowledge of hardships and | | of delicate health, he jumped into the | thick of active fleld service. slept in | the trenches, did sentry -duty and {fought again and again until his FINAL RUSH OF G death rendezvous came. tion hardened under grueling that such soldiers had, and he was strong enough to write some of his most wonderful poems on the very eve of a battle. He wrote bet- ter and better up to the day he was killed, and his work will last as one of the literary landmarks of the war. His poems have been collected and published by Scribners, and sold to such an extent that the royalties from them have already amounted to many thousands of dollars. Most of this sum Mr. and Mrs. Seeger have given | His constitu- lm the Belles Lettres branch of the the terrible American Library in Paris, and the remainder they are domating to the libraries now being established for the French by the American commit- tee for the devastated regions. The French 'have so appreciated Alan Seeger that they have given 300,000 francs to establish a monument to the Foreign Legion, consisting of a ped- estal on which is his statue by one of the leading sculptors of France. This is now being made, and It will soori be erected in the Place des Etats-Unis, whers President Wilson lived while at the peace conference. her suggestions to make the houses | he i~ It was in the ruins of Hattonchatel ble tribute with two he Rendezvous of | Rheims. The ninth century—eight or | | nine hundred yeara after Christ! That {castle was begun 300 years before { Rome was sacked by the Vandals and | about 200 years before one of the vi- | kings came down from Greenland and | discoVered America. It was two cen- turles old when Willlam the Con- queror landed in England and 600 years old when Columbus discovered America. Tt was in existence almost 11,000 years before we declared our | Independence of Great Britain. Nev- | ertheless, 1t was battered to pleces I close this 1y verses from Death™: 1 have a rendezvons with Death At some disputed barricade. When spring comes back with rustling shade And apple blossoms fill the air. I have a rendezvous with Death When spring brings back blue days and fa God knows "twere better to be deep Pillowed in silk and scented down i Whers' Love throbs out in blissful slecp. Pulse nigh to pulse and breath to breath, Where hushed awakenings are dear. But I're a rendezvous with Death At midnight in some flaming town. | almost in a-night, and the town and When spring trips north again this year, castle are now a mass of rubbish, And 1 to my pledged word am true, representing 70,000 pounds of dyna- T shall not fail that rendezvous. mite which the Germans used at the It is now one vear since 1 motored | time to Dlow up the chateau. Some {trom ¥ out to « little American |9f the arches and towers are still cometory ot far from Chateau. | Standing, and the front of the castle | Thierry, where, under a plain wooden |15 almost Intact, although its walls | cross. It the remains of Joyce Kilmer, | are cracked'and unsafe. n American boy, who wrote the most | We shall now leave the automoblle beautiful poem ever made to a tree, |t0 climb up the hill. We wind our Many of you. ke me, have com. |WAY among rulns that remind us of | mitted it to memory. It reads: ;&:‘fx": :’;?”‘i:"*“v"::h ‘7:;.: '::3:3 Heimie e 2o | knights trod, plcking our way in and 2 Y : |out of broken stones like those of a | quarry. We pass a battered white arch at the entrance of the city and stop in a doorway covered with masses of green ivy while the camera A tree that may in summer wear shoots. o | A nest of robius in her hair; We climd up io the castle and sit | down on its ruins. Beneath us In the TUpon whose bosom snow has lain: Aisne valley are some of the finest Who intimately lives with rain. farming lands of north France, with _new bulldings rising out of them. We can count ten towns within the range of | i | A tree whose hungry mouth is prest | ‘Against the eartl's sweet flowing breast: A tree that looks at God all day And lifts her leafy arms to pray: Poems are made by fools like me, God can make a tree ninth century by the Archbishop of | “THE HILLS AND PLAINS OF NORTHERN FRANCE TODAY ARE CHECK ERED WITH THE FIELDS OF THE DEAD OF ALL THE ALLIED NATIO! This American committee for devas- | stance, has spent upward of $300,000 | Sheffield have their French municipal : way and another more than § The same kind of work Is |families. tated France has already sent over donatlons amounting to about $1,600,- 000, and supplies valued at $500,000 more. The Quakers of Britain and the United States have done a great deal of medical work and in putting up portable houses and rebullding |ruined villages are being helped by |you ha village: ‘There are scores of towns and cities which have been adopted The cemetery in which Kilmer lies | |is beautifully kept, and the grass is | green over his grave, but there is no tree within a quarter of a mile and he sun beats down without restraint !upon the hundreds of little white | crosses standing there. Sergt. Kil- | mer's grave is surrounded by the| ses of little-known soldiers, and | it was only by accident that one of | our party found it and brought us to spot. As I looked at the cross I{ | thought of young Kilmer's poem in | which he painted the agony of our \ Savior on Calvary and thus made the of his own sufferings as a soldier: | My shoulders ache beneath my pack (Lie . Cross, upon His back), I march with feet that burn and smart (Tread, Holy Feet, upon my heart). Men shout at me who may mot speak (They scourzed Thy back and smote K. Thy | che | My rifle.hand is St and numb | (From s ed palm rivers come). Tord, Thou didst xuffer more for me Than wll the hosts of land and sen So let me render bac This millionth of Thy Amen, Could any nsan leave a beter monu- ment than that? * kx k k¥ N that same day I saw the grave | O of Quentin Roosevelt, and bowed | my head over the remains of the son lof our greatest American since Abra- ! ERMAN ARMIES.” ‘ham Lincoln was assassinated in Ford's Theater at Washington. Quentin lies on the side of a hill near where he fell with his fighting airplane. There are forest trees near by, and a beau- tiful monument, which the French keep decorated with flowers, stands above him. But let us get back to our aufo- mobile and turn the moving-picture camera crank. The next pictures are those of Coucy-le-Chateau, where some wonderful reconstruction work has been done by Mrs. Whitney War- ren of New York. Here %re to me some of the most terrible evidences of vandalism committed during the war. The stronghold will remain a historic ruin for ages to come. Coucy- le-Chateau was a great castle city, built in feudal times on a hill which rises abruptly out of the beautiful valley of the Aisne to three:fourths the height of the Washington monu- ment. The top of the hill is flat, and it was famous for its formidable cas- tle. The stronghold, whigh covered more than two acres, had been par- tially destroyed several times during the ages, but was always restored. The castle was bullt during the l | I \ JOST of the rebuilding here is in our vision—great red blotches on the |DY Various organizations throughout green and £old under our eyes. Right below us are portable houses roofed with sheets of galvanized iron, and near them the scaffolding and stones that denote new construction. Look- ing over the plain, our cyes follow the roads that crawl like white snakes through the green. The automoblles that fly over them look like bugs. The three Percheron horses of that farmcart are like toy animals of Noah's ark size, and the motor cyele fiylng behind it is 11tt1€ more than an ant on the run. * X % % . 4VL the vitlages at the foot of the hill, and it is there that one of the latest centers of the American com- mittee for the devastated regions is| busy at work. It is under the direc- tlon of Mrs. Anton-Smith of Ohio and Washington, and she has with her to Select a Time When BY JEROME BENEDICT. ‘M not sure whether to take my | wife and son to Siberia or to a | perhaps half a dogzen American | sanatorium. Siberia holds a num- | women. I remember one bright young ber of inducements. For one | Philadelphia girl who has the same | thing, neighbors there are so busy name as mine. T went with her to|Keeping themselves warm that they the room where the clinic for babies | Probably would not have time to be is held, and as T looked at the little | 3dvising other people how to take basket on scales in which the infants | Care of & baby. are welghed I asked her If she did the | On the other haud, alas, if human Weighing. She replied: nature Is the same thing the world e el |over, T suppose our neighbors there Tt = i would blow & few lcicles off their That means she is a chauffeur for 10863 ard forget to shiver long hat Oscar hasn't | this little b h of Aiaadl enough to tell us tha | k. e h"’;;:;; enough furs around his head or that | {his boots are too short and are | cramping his toes. Now a sanatorium—the kind 1 mean { —holds people who are interested in green horses and dragons, or who think that the pink ants have declared war against them—or who have rela- tives that think they can manage for- tunes which inmates previously ac- | cumulated much better than the accu- | mulators. | The big consolation there would be {that whatever advice' they gave | would not have to be taken seriously. But our neighbors! No wonder | | that alienist on the corner gives me a professional look when I rass b; Like a bird of prey ready to descend: | Or a vivisectionist with a fat rabbit | on the table in front of him. i The trouble did not start in its full | {intensity until we got the baby cab. { Blisstully unconsclous of the effects | resultant from a stroll, we set forth | proudly to give the first born the air. | |1t was a signal for the swarm of advice-givers to alight on us. At the { head of the procession came that dear |Mrs. Spinks. “My dear, my dear,” she chortled at Emmeline, “you ought never take 2 new baby out with all that covering on it. Look how the poor thing is sweating. Take off a couple of those blankets.” | * ok X X W, Mrs. Spinks is nice. She loaned us = flatiron when we ! fioved Into the block and had lost ours | en route. She was only telling us for our own good. The poor thing—as she monickered our son—did seem to be sweating. He always does, come to think of it. So we took off two of the blankets, smiled and thanked our friend, and started along again. \ We got four and a holf steps without interference. Then Mrs. McNoodle, who has twelve children and ought to know all about kids, swooped down on us, leaving ths three youngest McNoodles squalling on the porch. “What & sweet baby!” She tactful, is Mrs. MoNoodle. *“Googly, googly g00; pechus ittul wascal” she effervesces. “Jsn’t he the cutest thing?” (Everybody calls him “thing.’) “But he's shiver- ing with cold. Why don’t you wrap out of her ’teens, and, like the cap- | him up better? Haven't you any more tains of-Industry who came to Wash- | plankets than that yet, my dear? Tl ington during the war, she gives her |1end you one, if you wish. But keep services for §1 a year. that dear child warm.” The work at Coucy-le-Chateau is| Now what could we do? When we largely devoted to the teaching of |nesded & hot-water bottle a couple of children, the instruction of the moth- | months ago, at the time when Emme- ers and taking care of the poor. The |line's sister had indigestion, wasn't it bulldings are rude shacks but they|Mrs. McNoodle who came across with are beautifully cared for and well |the goods and who offered to stay all equipped. There is one shop about |night to take care of my sister-in-law? twenty feet square whero the boys|My wife has always said that she's a are taught carpentry and others in|dear, good nelghbor. We have always which girls and women learn domes- | thought so much of her! Well, we tic sclence and trad There is a|glanced around covertly to see if Mrs. good library, consisting of French|Spinks was in the sentry tower, books, which are changed twice a|stealthily rewrapped Oscar and made a month, and many children's books, in-|gracious getaway. cluding Uncle Remus' “Brer Rabbit,”| We got ten steps or so farther. which has been translated into|Everything ssrene,/ when out pops the French, with the same illustrations|stout Mrs. Glutt with' FluMkins in her as are used in America. arms. ~ Flufikine is a dog—a fat, This is only one type of what|aquirmy, woolly beastie. Mrs. Glutt America, England and some other|was the first one on the block to send countries have been doing in France. |Oscar a present. She had a little nain- 1 could flll this'paper with the stories | sook dress in thé house three days after and figures of our own special work. |he arrived. The great job is being done by the| “And how is little Oscar?" French, but the contributions of out- |rhe, stroking Fiuffikins with one hand siders are beyond the conception of |and Oscar's blankst with the other. those who lived before the world war.| Oscar gave one look at her and I'm i in Rheims, and villages have been | babies. oot TUpward of 200,000 childrer adopted by all sorts of bodies scat- |being done by the chief cities of | were cared for in your hospitals, anc tered over the United States. Britaln has donated millions of pounds for the restoration of the war-swept zone, while more than fifty towns. English cities and London | ing supported by Spain. I wonder if You members of the | Red Cross at home know how much closed last July, e done in your work which | Great | France, and several villages are be- | financial assistance was given to ove: 800 institutions fighting tuberculosis Al this is a striking evidence of the unearned increment in brotherly luve that has come out of the most saviige involving expendi- |and brutal conflict since Attila a has adopted Verdun, Manchester will | tures in France of more than $140.- | his Huns swooped down upon Rom: spend $250,000 to raise the dust heap 000,000. You assisted more than the charitable world. Chicago, for in- | that was Mezieres, and Newcastle and | 1,70,000 refugees, and helped in one | (Cargenter's World Travels. Coprrighted, 15 by Frank G. Carpenter.) TheDear,Kind Neighbors! How Would Baby Survive Without Their Advice? But Emmeline and Jerome Wonder How Much the Fare Is to Siberia—And Then There Is the Sanatorium, Where the Advice That Is Given Would Not Have to Be Taken Seriously—T ving the Coast Is Clear for a Journey With the Infant Cab. another at Fluffiking' wriggly nose. Then he caught the scent of Bermudas on Mrs. G.'s breath. (She is very par- tial to Bermuda’s favorite plant. Osear | is mot.) When he looked at her he turred down the corners of his mouth. When he looked at ihat dog he actually frowned. But when the pungent srent of the onfon struck his olfactory S he lifted up his fists and kicked vigor- ously, while slowly but swellingly arose his wail. “He must have gas on hi diagnoses our friend. ow, let me show yvou what to do. There, there, | Stand back a little, Emme- * K % ¥ ND we stand there helpless while she drops a few hundred pounds | of avoirdupois over the cab, hoists Osear up and deposits him on his stomach. | (My wife is not in full accord with this theory, but I contend that when she buried Oscar's nose in his pillow and turned his line of vision toward the bottem of the carriage the remozed the cause of the wailing. As a matter of proof of my contention I submit the fact that he shut up like a clam.) “See how easy it is when You under- stand,” she gloated, wiping perspiration from her forehead. We thanked her and went our way. “She surely does know a lot about children for one who has never had—" 1 started. “Jerome,” said my wife quickly, “you should never mention that couple's mis- fortune like that. I'm sure they would 1ove to have a houseful of children." Miss Beattie-Cardoza—who I always maintained was really named Miss Betty Cardosa at birth, taking on the name Inex Beattie-Cardosa as an after- thought—stopped our conversation by running toward the carriage. Before we knew whether Oscar was crawling out or was swallowing his foot she had unfolded him from the blanket and turn- ed him over on his back. He registered continued contentment. Miss B.-C. sighed with relief. “"You poor things!” she murmured con- descendingly sympathetic. (Now weare ' in the “thing” class) “Do you want to smother your beautiful baby? Never, never, NEVER let him lie on his nose. ‘Why, when'I was a nurse—" She really was a nurse once. And she’s been so helpful. For instance, she taught my wife that by keeping a rigid straight-up-and-down position on her pallet at night she would never need & hot-water bottle to keep her feet warm. Allow your blood to circulate freely, you know, and warm up the pedal extremities. But whea she imitates a kidnaper on the street and scares the liver! stomach,” | {out of a fellow. one is tempted. I | claim. to let her past kindnesses | fade into obscurity. | * % % % ET'S skip the eight other little| helpers that we met on the way to the corner. But wait until you hear about the return voyage. : Oscar avas Iying on his sids {chanks | | to Mrs. Scrump) when we again| neared the domiclle of the former nurse. i thought of it just In time. T am like that. She was fooling around with begonias in her flower bed and had her back to us. Just| after 1 had squirmed Oscar around ! on his back again she turned to and came down for an inspection. As we passed, with Oscor on his back, smiled sweetly at us. But there were Mrs. McNoodle and | Mrs, Glutt coming along. Probably heading for the Select Motion-picture Palace. They go cvery night. They | were approaching down the walk from | the McNoodle residence when my wife | spied them. I stood between the car- | riage and Miss Beattie—Cardoza at the rear for camouflage, while Emmeline went forward and turned Oscar back on his nose. It was skillfully done. Mrs. Mac saw the three blankets and | smiled. Mrs. G. looked at the nose in the plllow and snilled. We got by them nicely, but they tried to stop and chat, and here comes Mrs. Spinks, ad- vocate of plenty of air and little of covering, salls all set and bearing down i on us at a terrifying gait. I thought quickly. Mars was bright. |1 showed the ladies the cahals of {Mars—or tried to—while Emmeline made her getaway with Oscar, grab- bing off two blankets from the lower: Tear aperture of the canopy she walked slowly away. | I left the ladies staring at Mars. | When I got to Emmeline and Mrs. Spinks I just caught the last words of a lecture on the benefit of plenty of ozone on the pores of the infant's epidermis. she | That was only the start. We've tried walking the boy at all hours. Either they're sweeping sidewalks the milk, or coming back from the pre-breakfast visit to the grocery; or they're bargaining with hucksters, or chasing kids from their lawns, or chatting across the open space between verandas in the middle of the day, or just hanging around to get in our way at night. * x k¥ E'VE trled—disastrously—to take trips 4t all hours. One night when Mrs. Spinks, the blanket lady, and Mrs. McNoodle, the anti-blanket- ite, came upon us at the same time, the only thing that saved us was the early in the morning, or getting lnl argument they got into among them. selves. And we mearly lost our Parisian vase a few days ago when Mrs. Glutt and Miss Beattie-Cardoza came to visit us at the same time and found Junior on his side in the crib, instead of on his back or on his nose. What can we do? 1 wonder what the fare for three to Siberia is. We might as well try that before the sanatorium. Radium and the Sun. T is held by some scientists that, by reason of the facts known about radfoactivity, it is possible to in- crease the estimated ¢ge of the sun and the period during which it will continue to furnish light and heat to {the earth from ten to twenty times. Thus, instead of being 100.000.000 years old. the sun may be 1.000,000,000 or 2,000,000,000 years old, and its fu- ture duration may be 100,000.000 or 200.000,000 yvears in place of 10,000,000, Knowing as we do that an atom of matter can contain an enormous store of energy in itself, we have no right to assume that the sun is incapable of liberating atomic energy to a de- gree at least comparable with what it would liberate if made of radium. Rubber Pavements.: BUT for their expensiveness it is probable that pavements of india rubber would be largely used in city streets. That, at least, is the infer. ence to be drawn from experience with rubber pavement in London. In 1881 the two roads under the hotel at Euston station were paved with rubber two inches thick. This pave- ment, under heavy traffic, remained in continuous use for twenty-one years. In 1902 it was renewed, hav- ing been worn dowrn to about half ity original thickness. Lately a rubber pavement has been lald in the court- yard of the Savoy Hotel, London. The cost for covering an area of seventy-five by fifty feet was nearly $10,000. Sugar Gloss on Butter. A SINGULAR method of protecting = rolls of butter from deterfora- tion due to outside influences is said to be practiced in France. It con- sists simply in coating the butter with a glaze of melted sugar, laid on with a soft brush. The surface of the butter is slightly melted and a * protective varnish is formed. The process has also been introduced e & large soale in England.