The evening world. Newspaper, May 11, 1918, Page 11

SATURDAY, MAY 11, 1918 ~ Quaint Old French Towns And Once Fertile Fields. Now Area of Desolate Waste What Battic Has Not Destroyed, Germans Have De- molished in Spirit of Wanton Vindictiveness, Says | } Noted Author in Word Pictures of War-Torn | hi French Districts After German Occupancy. \ This is the second of a series of articles written in France dy EUnor Glyn and being published, by special arrangement, in The Evening World. The third article will be published on this page neet Saturday. (SECOND ARTICLE.) \ By Elinor Glyn. { P ARIS, ——I can never forget the strange feeling the sight of the glorious May sun pouring down upon the ruins of Lassigny| gave me. The sensation was that one was in a dream—that it! uld not be true ings, but that one would wake as from a nightmare. that the passions of men should so destroy created I climbed a huge it of fallen masonry and tried to picture the little church on some peace- 11 Sunday morning before destruction fell upon it. The contrast was oocruel, “This is the result of fair fighting here,” the officers informed | | ne; “both sides are responsible. It is the effect of war—but wait, | ) | | nadame, until you see what the Boches have done deliberately from pite—then you can feel anger—wait!” | The Battle of Lassigny was terribly fierce—the country round is N eartrending to observe. Here and there old seeds coming up for them- WITAT A GERMAN INVASION MEANS TO THE HOME DESCRIBED FOR EVENING WORLD READERS 1 dividual boundartes, so that you seem to gee for countless miles over a de | vastated world, with no people to tend it, and no oxen or herds—only | desolation and decay. Here and there groups of battered, ruined cottages or the crumbling spiro of some old village church, breaks the monotonous desert, and now and then some implement of agriculture, which had served | a3 a bit of barricade, would appear. And everywhere trenches—trenches— | trenches and barbed wire, broken wagon wheels and masses of plates of | curved fron sheeting, riddied and torn, which had been used for the) bombproof shelters for guns, Truly a battlefield, even after the removal of the dead, {s a terribly impressive thing to sec. The trenches in this part of the French lines are most wonderfully | made; they have a distinguished, finished look, | Everything the German constructs 1s vulgar, even these underground | salleries—somehow their sandbags on the parapets look more fat and | aggressive than the neat French basketwork cases filled with earth, 1) really belleve that I would now know which trench was which without | being told; eo different 1s what I may perhaps cali the art of work. | At one place the shell-holes, half filled with mud, made {t seem tm- | Possible that we could advance, but a black Morroccan started be ey 04 parently from nowhere—and helped to fill them with stones, and so at} last we came out of this indescribable slough of despond and to a company | of these slim, ‘tall African men, who were skilfully repairing the worst | selves are making green under-| bs growth between the millions of| y yards of rusted barbed wire, but no / / peasa ivating the land; it) { lying follow and useless, blood. soaked and barren. Oh, poor, beau- when one realizes that such malice can !!ve In the minds of men. Thero was a picture to look at! ‘That mass of rubbish is the Hote do Ville! And those few houses down that ttle street by which one enters the town were the only ones I saw not actually demolished. The rest were like the ones {n the foreground. One's indignation mounts as one drives along street after street, until in tho “Place” tho climax is reached. Somehow that very antique sixterath century house looked the most pathetic of all—it reminded one of some old and refined grandmother who bas been insulted and 11 used. It might, indeed, havo been tho home (although I do not suppose that it was) of the ancient creaturo whose story was told to me today. This ts not one of the tnaldents given before the Commission on oath, but the person who told it to me lives near Roye and was a witness of the fact. NOT EVEN THE OLD ESCAPED OUTRAGES, A very feotle and suffering lady 80 years old, tended by a faithful matd, was too fll to get up when most of the rest of the inhabitants were evacuated, She could not leave her bed. So the brutal German captain tore the servant from her, saying: “Now you shall look after yourself or starve!” She was found three days afterward by the incoming French. almost dying, having been unable to assist herself even to procure food. But now I come to the most shocking history of all, one about a young it was taken before the Commission in April of last year. The Sub-Mayor and a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur. wife witness was t ScenesofDemolitionand Desolation, Scarsof GermanInvasi RUINS AT ROYE—TRENCH IN BATTLE-TORN LASSIGNY—ONCE FERTILE COUNTRYSIDE NOW A WAR DESERT tiful France! Often on this journey through her lacerated communes | ave met difficulty keeping back my ears, After a perilous advance over wly mended roads we came to e part where the struggle was ost de te of all, “no man’s! nd” being at some points not more an fifty yards wide between the i re is hardly | is one vast} alka- fines, Here g, the scen es on the way San Francisco, Ali that tangled stuff is barbed wire dark pot on the right an toa 1g0' In the dista ere Is the iin of a splendid chatea nplete | shattered and roofle | Tho road cuts straig.t through tho 18 THE CiTY HALL OF ROYE, WHERE NOT ONLY PROP- ERTY WAS WRECKED BUT SOULS WERE TORTURED.” labyrinth of trench cating trenches | and reserve lines of both nd aod oe, and wherever it crosses one of these abysses it has been mo he battle with boards and earth, that the going !s like th oughest corduroy track out West or in the backwoods of Canad 3 and communt- second ded since t on the da, The strangest remains of occupation are lying about in trenches pages of booke, dits of shells, broken morsels of logged with mud. And beyond one poo} 4 Lassigns outh organ guns, a of turgid water, wo old, weil worn wooden sabots had been left, close to a rotting mat- ess at the edge of a dugout. After this we we on to Crapeau il, Another scene of franti security of the better think many chauffeurs rican boys who drove struggle, and to reach tt we had to leave even th ended road, and take to a track which | do n ould have dared, ch the nice ashing A our car, turn and iu bout, undertook manf: NEITHER CHURCHES NOR CEMETERIES SACRED TO GERMANS | At one part of the German lines they hal ruthleesly taken the grave es from the destroyed church here and paved the way for their guns, — SATURDAY MAY 41, 1918 Old and Defenseless Tortured, Homes Sacked and Ruined _ and Families Torn Apart many’s “Thoroughness” When Subjecting Town to “ Frightfulness.” the middle of the night—Monsteur Colombier—a one-armed man, They ked him to direct them to a certain house. To get rid of them he replied, T am alone—I cannot leave, go higher up. Th then entered the prem- {ses of Monsieur Hesagoe. garden, but he was caught and slaughtered. “The soldiers espying Colombler, who was now also endeavoring to save himself, secured him and killed him too. Nearby, at the same time two other soldiers penetrated into the home of Monsieur and Madame XX 4 married couple living In a house situated In the road leading from Roye to Carrepuls. They captured the husband and threw him out of the door. Then they attacked the wife, a young woman of about thirty years.” Very often {t has been proven that these kinds of outrages have been committed by German officers—or, if not, by subordinates acting under orders, but tn this caso the men were common soldiers. | The witness goes to tell of the personal treatment he received, having three times been placed against a wall to be shot, under the lying pretext that some of the Inhabitants had fired at the soldiers, He was kept there |expecting death at each moment, and one occasion for three hours—tmaglny \the cruel strain of that!—and the last time an officer held him for an | hour, after having sald: “Come, Monsiew Maire, that you may be shot!” | The witness further states that what damage the exigencies of war had dono to Roye was quite remark- jelle, but the Germans deliberatety demolished the houses, destroyed the onol France em oem cree trees, while they collected and mu |tilated all the Implements of agrteul Jture Ink RR “NO MORE” HOMES THAT ARE Another witness before the Com mission tells of the heartrending scenes when the young girls were ltorn from their mothers and driven off—no one knew for what purpose |nor to what destination. Every on who could do any work was taken Jouly the very aged and the bable tert, W # they now—the poo |people? Alas, who can t Think jor the aching hearts of the mothers |away from thelr Httle ones, unaware jit y are living or dead! | brutes then finished by blow jing the church and the Hotel de | Ville, and plundering every remalz Ing se, while they rendered th furnaces of the bakers useless and de | stroved the conduits of water for the town to Insure starvation and thirst for the wretched weaker ones they HERE THERE IS HARDLY A TREE STAND damage, so that tr rts could pass on again soon, and presently we reached the first evidences of utter wanton, barbarous mutilation ’ 1 nd we had an unpleasant emotion when the wheels of the car crunc mitted by the foe—the town of Rove. ver these monuments of the dead or ° To desecrate toms seems to be almost @ pastime with these German: estraae HE RUIN THAT WAS ROYE: = w many of the signed testimonies before the Commissions which He on I begin with the description of the route from Noyon to Roye-—for | table bealde me tell of (hese thir miles and miles just a track of wanton, barbarous spoliation, Do not the - oe ieee Candor (Ols A ary OF bbldlare Siolating poor trees look helpless? Think of the toil to cut them all down! graves of the famfltes Trefoon and Censter to look for jewels—and of |, SRE RES t # . on 39 SORE ARS AF TEAC Wes op still worse behavior in the church—these are the words of the witness: a ted ai 4 c rie : Ae YAUOAlED Imagine any i ized 5 “One day at the end of 1916 I saw in the cemetery five or elx German |\? se.) ann act the Germans damned far ail time? A eRe soldiers i# the act of throwing aside the lid of the sepulchre Maziler, which a ar! Are no h jermans damned for all t!m Re nber db lready st them. They examined the ioterior acd then | rors? mutilation was to serve no military purpose and that Jt x hes Deen & Aaielspsi : rE ‘ coil aken calculat! be c rk, the intentior etired, Our church was odlous ged; they went so far even ay to| Ave taken calcula RPE OBE BPUTET OfbwANee tae i a r Har abate se xed to the crosses, and I mysott | Waste and destroy—a simple venting of rago and spite, which would | heer OF the Chey Oe En ie self) cniidish tf ft were not so flendishly cruel » emoved the tinsel drapery with which they had dressed up @ Saint injo F ? 7 oF bed Do any of you who read know the lovely old town of Roye? A quat basi ‘ gi 1 her of body or soul | prosperous spot 1 with houses of the great period of 4 And « French tend their enemies’ wooden crosses with courteous | °¢ an F still, one especially tn the a Mine ’ ' near each separate battlofeld tidily kept, | ‘Pecta h century art, with carved oak beams and woodwork t a Paris another friend » asked me if, should 1 be | Its & nt iin Aumont, | would look at it and tell her how | y manufactortes also of sugar and other things, a t had been sacked by the Germans while in the | t! sa rich centre of the country round, I must ascerta had let {t to before tho war, but not to the exa nber of its inhabitants before the war so that you may Jud 3 jot the but to the eye now, Jn its deserted loneliness and ruin, It ap ered this destroyed village and I saw | pears a fairly lar try town, as the one in the picture I really} A _ sensation of blank astonishment come as tt F describe {t to !ts affilcted owner. | One can hard ‘ e's eyes. If you dor ow Re y t jew, rising out of masses of masonry and| of you probably ha tored through just 6 other dear If o! i th tb be age of Indignation fills these people's hearts against a foe so y wanton and cruel? | ONCE FEMTILE COUNTRY NOW A MERE DESERT. | 7 ai ttleffelds of Crapoaumesni! and fiatsh seen deep pits of 's like the oom ineven shape— | meneements of os hole ing sights, eoattered tn endings series ove ren {lelds, Conevive batteries artillery having to) gallop over such ar te they avold falling iat eerie oh (hess a holes were filled with thle hideous rea emical in the explosives, I imagine, — | weter, tho © The panora t te place because of the oolossal hedges cr to their dignified Hotels do Ville, thelr “place ! of charming architecture, and all self-resy ng, prosperous and proud Try to call up ture of this Roye as it looks now, with alt senting th arance of dolls’ houses when the ch who 5 with them have been n mashed up all they contains & through the an {ndoreribsble congic ot f and masonry and Tattored curtains fi wt ov t of domentio poaseaston broken by b hands 7 ar tavoy, when the pulvertaing by bombw placed tn 6 mplete these de. s' ends! A shiver ¢ 16 ING—THE SCENE IS ONE VAST WASTE.” This 1s his statement. lation of It, becau “During I feel that I would rather give a literal trans I cannot find words of my own: t German occupation, which the commenced on the oth of August, 1914, I undertook the functions of Mayor, The pillage was eneral, and was particularly severe in the houses which had been aban- | ned, The sugar manufactory and the property of Monsieur Labruyero the Faubourg Sainte Gilles were deliberately burnt, On the 6th or 7th ra belonging to the group which appeared to be mber two had not tho’ \curry {nto slavery! There Is no one who possesses « home who would not rosent its de |struction. A he is a place eat urated with , whether ft great or small-—whether built by a = ——jman's own hands at the slde of |mining camp, or constructed by the cleverest masons for a rich selgneur | There ta that sense of possession about {t—"the thing fs mine".and wher this sense of possession has been ennobled by sentiment and cemented by THE STRANGEST REMAINS | OF OCCUPATION ARE LYING | ABOUT THE TRENCHES OF | LASSIGNY—PAGES OF BOOKS, BITS OF SHELL, BROKEN | MORSELS OF GUNS. memo: | tradition for hundreds of years, {t becomes almost part of a family’s re |Mgton, this pride In the home. | And now we get back to Roye! And I want you to stand with me |{m fmagination in the “Place.” There is an absolute silence, and, beyond ourselves, there {3 no living thing. In front of us is the very old Louse and beside us the Hotel de Ville—both gutted and mutllatedwhitle across the way, there on the left {s some one's home with shutters closed—perhaps to conceal that there It {8 all very melancholy, and I am sure that, leave, are no floors left within! with me, you will be glad to But what ts that moving aw ere down that street leading out of |the town? Surely, it 1s a peasant woman—she must be 70 years old at jleast! Yes, she comes toward us with faltering steps, her features | stamped with a haunting fear—she passes on—and we see her enter a | battered cottage, the roof of which t» gone, all but the part which covers one emall room, And we are told that she lives there alone; she cannot ve persuaded to lea because this tiny shattered structure means to her even in {ts desolation, all that remains of that sacred place, her HOME! | (Copyrtaht, 1918, by the Ed ne Many a Patriot Hates Sacrifice Some Birds Want to Hang Out a Service Flag for Their Appetites Because They Had Chicken All Winter Instead of Beef By Arthur (“Bugs”) Baer hing Co, (The New York Kvening World © Third Liberty Loan bubbling over the top !!ko a tea boiling to the ears, lots of Amerteans are getting round »uldered from patting ‘emseives on the shoulderbiades, Of hey deserve a s€ e stripe on their old bank rolls. But why ’ hilarious contortions because you have merely done your duty? s who think they are entitied to w r-button vest because their siete: and portieres for the soldiers, Other sta actrobatics so that they can and pat ‘emselves on the suspenders because the Mr. Hoover last winter. e aro some Pp ar a service 1 aunta at- ng ear muff gons ip King le The only sacrifice Mr, Hoover asked of the fester-around-the t was to eat kon instead of meat. If that 1s a sacrifice we'll six more ence You can play that chicken tune again by re 1 somo birds want to hang out a service flag for F because they scoffed chicken all winter Instead of t our national bird but the chicken makes a rood tudy on r And the guy who thinks he has oversubs 1 hls " fing tok ia excee 1s quota of ¢ A a bit especially v schicken, Watt un ‘ 1 to ‘ a th into @ sawdust croquette like t are ¢ nj have something to wave our star spaugle "t have any ehtckon to ent for their ¢ | into two classes—-the Junkers and the Junk started the war Wait Until We Get Down to Sinking a Tooth Into a Sawdust Croquette Like They Are Doing In Berlin, The Junkers don't Hooverize on the old biscuits, Their stomachs are very full, even ff thetr skulls are empty. The Junk is different, They . tomachs with fu ut the second table in your boa z house { h turkey 1en there isn't any se d tat All the J 3 put o | the nose-bag at the first table, and when the eth h there tan enough grub left to thread need i 3 second-handed over in the land of the Imperial Jur ‘ nd they are | second-footed, Nobody has aT ‘ » Noah got his whie ! kera caught In the anchor. 4 Ber with an un ed to look a synthetle food rts built crippled toothpick 9 accused the Clown Prince's ph mak stograph fi lows and vacar | out of powdered bung out of wood wit » aplintery eld: nd the oom pant that the Kalser fs ruling by the ald of right and a few | miMion stuffed ballot boxe Bread ts structed out of terra cotta flour with a reinforos ment of concrete and { t forever. ‘This makes tt very durable, but not ia ) sea tt ten't necessary to vaccinate the i > ‘The nird who ts allowed t ’ ! bor tires te ae Pr it ith his fl « 1 on ar whieh haven't wor yut since the war busted ou p owing ma and the fron hats. Everything « patched e crazy quilt, After the war Germany will have w dos of fron derbies to start fn ‘ ng all over agat And yet some sacrificing stay-a s complain vie han Halo that they regret that ¢ ave ¢ me chicken to eat at each meal for their country | especially given to pillage, came to the house of one of our citizens io * Overcome with terror, he tried to escape by his « ight it worth while to, a ET a i (