PRIDE HUMBLED .

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 147, 22 June 1940, Page 7

PRIDE HUMBLED .

FALL OF GERMANY.

THE ARMISTICE OF 1918.

IN COMPIEGNE WOODS.

(By ELSIE K. MORTON)

For a long while I stood gazing at a slab of black granite set in a clearing in the heart of the Forest of Compiegne. Again and again I read the word 6 inscribed in bold lettering on the shining stone. There was something sinister in the inscription, stark and bitter, even in its triumphant declaration: "Here, the 11th of November, 1918, succumbed the criminal pride of the German Empire, vanquished by the free nations it tried to enslave." I shivered as I turned away; for a moment the loveliness of the morning was shadowed, by a dark presentiment. "God help the French," I thought, "if ever Germany gets the upper hand!"

The hour has struck. Once again the German hordes have poured down the road to Soissons and Compiegne, wrecking, bombing, and blasting as they went. The wheel of Destiny has turned it s full dread circle. France, beaten to her knees, utterly exhausted, victim of the "criminal pride" of a Germany infinitely stronger, more ruthless than the Germany of a generation ago, has had to sue for peace. Onee again the ei»oys of warring nations have come to Compeigne to draw up terms of another armistice.

The granite slab was set at the end of a short length of rusty railway line, and on that line once stood the railway carriage in -which Count Oberndorff, General Von Winterfeld and Herr Erzberger travelled from Berlin to make terms with the Allies. Ordinary Dining Car. I walked down the path to a white etone building, set among the forest trees at *he end of the beautiful Avenue

do l'Armistice. Within that building, treasured as. a sacred national memorial ever since 1918, was the railway carriage, an ordinary Wagon-Lits dining car, in which Foch, Weygand and the English envoys had met the Germans.

I entered the building. It was completely deserted this sunny spring morning. The only sound to be heard was the cooing of doves, and the call of a cuckoo out in the woods. But as I stood there, looking through the windows of the carriage, I seemed to see, sitting there once more, the men who thought they were settling the destiny of Europe —of the world!—for generations to come!

Uncompromising and terse was tha great French general's first question t3 the Germans —"What was the purpose of their visit?"

Herr Erzberger replied that they had come to receive the proposals of the Allies regarding an armistice. Foch replied bluntly that the Allies had no proposals to make. There was a further interchange, the Germans trying to put the best possible face on their mission of humiliation, and asking to be informed of the conditions upon which an armistice would be granted?

Then Foch's rapier tlirust: "We have no conditions to offer . . . Are you asking for an armistice? If yon arc, then I can inform you of the conditions subject to which one may be obtained." Beaten to the dust, stripped of the last shred of Hohenzollern pride, the envoys then declared that they had conic to seek an armistice.

Against one of the conditions they made most strenuous protest—the delivery of their entire supply of machine-guns. And the reason! They said that the German nation was in a state of revolt, seething with rebellion; should riots break out, the guns would be urgently needed! But the Allies were implacable; the machine-guns were handed over. "Le Triomphe de Humanite." There at the shining table they sat day after day, victors and vanquished, until the long parleys were over. There ■ on the table still stood the calendar, ash-tray and inketand that had stood there twenty-two years ago. There also lay copies of Foch's telegrams written on the eve of Armistice Day,

and Paris newspapers _of November 12, with streaming black headlines announcing tlie abdication of the Kaiser, the signing of tlie Armistice and—"Le v Triomplie de Humanite!" I went out again into the sunshine, and wandered down the smooth pathway of the Avenue de I'Armistice, to the junction of the Soissons-C-ompiegne Roads. Twenty-two years ago there had been only the scattered ruins of the forest, shell-torn ground, desolation on every side. Now there were leafy glades, violets anad primroses, and tiny white anemones that starred the ground like flecks of snow. Birds were singing in the trees, the sun shone full on the outspread, sculptured wings of the dying swan that formed a poignantly lovely memorial to 1 "The Heroism of the Soldiers of France, Defenders of Their Country, and Glorioa* Liberators of Alsace and Lorraine." . 1 turned at last down the long, ; straight road that led three miles back ■ through the forest of Compeigne. But it i was not of tlie swan, nor the flowers. i not of the railway car, nor the glories of ■ the Mirror Hall at Versailles I was thinking as I walked on and on; it wa3 r of that black slab of granite lying stark I beneath the blue spring sky: "Here Succumbed the Criminal Pride of the German Empire." a I wonder if that inscription still stand* . to-dav ?