MARK OF THE BEAST.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 137, 9 June 1917, Page 13

MARK OF THE BEAST.

THE GERMAN IN RETREAT. HOW FRENCH TOWNS WERE DEVASTATED. I should like to put on record, in more deliberate detail than was possible in hurried telegrams written at the end of long and laborious journeys, the naked facts of the Gorman evacuation of French towns and villages, writes Mr. Beach Thomas, from British Headquarters in France. I saw from a point within reach of the pellets the very last shells tired at Bapaiime. have traversed many blasted villages, ami have spent almost leisurely hours in Peromie— fondly called by the French La Pucelle—which has lost under German treatment every touch of her maidenly grace and beauty. With such opportunities it is not difficult to tell how much of the ruin has been wrought by shell lire, how much by mine or fire or army house-breakers. Calculated brutality, scientific evisceration, cannot cloke themselves under the „ui<=c of acts of war. The farts are these: As soon as the inhabitants were driven otT and sent hehind this preat fortified line of which the German papers boast, all that was worth having was carted off and all the re-t destroyed. The manner of destruction varied with the thing to be destroyed. Iv Peronne are many fine trees planted for ornament. Tiie German military authorities, probably from lack of labour, coulu not cart them away, could not even spend time in felling them.

So instructions were given to hack every tree, as a hedge-layer cuts hedgestakes, just deep enough to ensure the death of the tree. So the Germans left "his mark." a V-shaped convict's mark, cut half-way through each trunk of the avenue. Fruit trees are more carefully severed than ornamental trees, and especial care has been taken to destroy completely the espaliers and prettily trained fruit trees in which French gardeners take special and peculiar delight. I do not know why, but the sight of these little fruit trees with their throats cut filled mc with more trenchant rage against the German mind than all the rest of the havoc.

So much for the gardens. Now for the houses. I do not know how many score I entered, how many hundred I stared into through the shattered facades. Along whole streets, where every front wall was rent open. I could find no vestige of any shell bole or of the distinctive oval hole that a shell usually punctures in brickwork. The work had been done. I am wholly convinced, by small charges of ammonal, one of which was found and most bravely carried away by one of the party. Within the houses mess and filth were invariable. It was a wonder how so much rubble could have been amassed. In the Hotel de Yille in Peronne. a building spared because used *o the last as a hospital, each room, save only the cellers and dugouts below the cellars. Was impassable for debris.

The general impression of desolation wrought by some bull-headed minotaur or vulture harpy was etched into the features of a more odious because more human and intelligent monster when the minor individual details of this general wreckage reached the imagination. Here was a long mirror hung against the wall. It was shivered by means of a hammer still lying on the floor. Here was a cabinet with shallow shelves, each of which had been hacked by some blunt instrument. Here again was a Renaissance mantelpiece finely cut and designed in marble. It had been battered out of shape and pattern by the blunt ed"*e of an axe. The effect was not less brutal in the very rare places where apparently something had been spared.

For example, a certain number oi books had been left in a fine library, but the greater number were thrown about the floor and wantonly torn and fouled. No picture- were left intact: no si'igl : table or chair or pice of crockery. Indeed, hardly anywhere could I find Mv.ce of furniture. I can only suppose that most of it was carted off and is probab'.y in the hands of the Prussian furniture fakers, who have great German genius in their art. But how much was burnt, how much was carried off, is quite crnjectura!. Ie Peronne fires had been lit here and there, and a few houses were -till smoking. In Bapaume, which I only saw at night, the burning was more extensive. In the villages the fires w-jre the biggest and most thorough, probably for the reason that the material was of less value. Nowhere do any whole houses exist. The churches are blown up by mines. I have said nothing of acts of destruction that have any military object. War, as conducted by the Boche, is a beast's game and has bestial rules. The mining of all wells, except the one or two left for chemical treatment, is. I suppose, a military precaution like the shattering of the railway stations and the permanent way. Indeed, with regard to military precautions of this sort, my personal feeling was that by far the least Thorough part of the work was the blocking of traffic. You could drive a motor at good speed along main roads seven or eight hours after the enemy had left them.

Th<" mining and blocking seemed to my eyes rather casual and perfunctory, at any rate vastly inferior in thoroughness to the looting and the wanton excesses against property. The military mining and tree felling were done under orders. The stealing and breaking up of gardens and houses were done for pleasure and profit—enn amore. So it is that, you can bieycie along country roads in the rear of the enemy and meet little obstruction. Scores of obvious checks and harriers have been omitted. But in all the towns and in all the villages you m'sy search from dawn to dusk for any single example of slackness in the art. or perhaie science, of thieving and fouling.

In . eptember. 1014, in the close neighbourhood of R'ncims. a French general — "a soldier nnd a gentleman" if ever there was one—showed mc in r. little village shop how everything had been sifted till nothing worth more than 2sd was left in the heap on the floor, and I walked through villages robbed of e'/iry watch, every sheet, blanket and bolster. But the German has advanced since those day-. He can now loot a large town so that not the value of a penny piece is left, and he ran retreat over a countryside without leaving a roof or a saucepun or a fruit tree.