GERMAN FIRE FIENDS.

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 July 1915, Page 2

GERMAN FIRE FIENDS.

VILLAGES WANTONLY WIPED OUT. THE. SLOW DOOM OF RHETMS. The most complete specimens of Geieman ruthlessness which I have seen in France are in the province of Champagne, where I have been walking through places once known as the villages of Serinaize r Heiltz-le-Ma,urupt >: Blesmes, and Huiron. jjk Sehmaize has been utterly wiped ifjx. As far as I could see not one house was lei' '' ••iding. Not one wall was Spared.' It has been laid flat upon the earth, with only a few charred chimney stacks sticking out of the piles of brides and cinders. Strangb, piteous relics, of pretty dwelling-places lie about in .the, litter, signifyingfthat men and- women .; with some love for the arts of. life once lived here in decent.. comfort.■ The. notice board «rf fan' hotel which had given hospitality/to many travellers before it became )i blazing furnace^ lies * sideways on a in ass of broken _ bricks, with a' legend k« frightfully ironical. . that I laiigholl among the rums.

"Chauffage Central"—the system' oM central heating invented by the GerH mans in tins war has been too hot fofl this, hotel, and has burnt it to a wrecM of ashes- H Half a dozen peasants stood in oneflPJ the "streets," marked "by a line of rjH bish heaps, which had once been tjfl homes. Some of them had waited JMH the first shells came over their ney pots before they fled. SeverjM their friends, not so lucky in tifl their escape, had been crushed to <H by the falling houses. But it waM shell-fire which did the Germans strewed s the cottagesM their inflammable tablets whicxfl been: made for such cases and. sjfl torches to the window marching away to make other on their road of'retreat.'''■Serm*^o'^ e - ; i came a street of fire, -and from/each °* ;|H its houses flames shot but life scarlet, jflj snakes,- biting *&*+3ija;b. the _ pall Or '-M smoke. .Fva-sants hiding -in- ditches 3,'-mB mile itared at thV Jjurnace" in -sM which (all tieir household goods werg 'M being ;consu.ned. Something •of . their _;" :| own li'le seemed to be burning therij,' | leavingithe cust and: ashes of old hope* • and h<appihe>s. • ... , WHAy WAR DOES FOR m "1/hat waf mine,", said one of the , ! jl peasants, .ptinting, to a few , square yarfSs of wreckage.;: "I took my hcifoe across the' threshold that was % there. .'She "was'a fin© girL; d .-with hair like gold—some years »#•"*? Now her hair has gone quite white. J There are inaiy like that hereabouts,' >|jj white-haired l>e!pre their time." . . -'M I saw some "of these white-haired I women in Blesmes and Huiron and f other scrap heaps of German ruthless-, d ness. They wandered in a disconsolate; J| way about the ruins, watching the )-| building of wooden huts by a number fj of English "Quakers," who have come'l| out here.to put up shelters'for these '■■ homeless .people, of France. These vol- 9 unteers are doing good work—one of M the most beautiful; works of charity" which have been galled Out by this war, and are giving a new meaning ■;', to their name of thcs Society of Friends. But though they; are handy in the use - of the wood giveri them by the FrenchGovernment for <this purpose, not all _•_".. their industry ncir all their friendliness >~ can bring back ifhe beauty of these old] world villages M Champagne, built . centuries ago hj men of art and craft, ■,} and chiselled/ by Time itself so; that i the stones told tales of history to,the'.., villagers. . ■ '■ It will be f difficult to patch up; the grey old towier of Huiron Church, . through whicjh shells have crashed, or > to rebuild its bak roof, whose beams are \ splintered lilie the broken ribs of a rotting carcasle. , I passed a white-hair- | eu priest on | the roadway here. 'His ■■'.. hands were (flenched behind Ms'bent « back, and eveiW now andthen he thrust : back his broadYfelt hat and looked up *. at the poor bartered thing which had been his church,! with immense sadness M in his eyes. ' DESTRUCTION >DF RHEIMS. 1 Tliere was an old chateau near Hi*n>.9 on in which a noble France had lived. It had many poiirteVl gables' :?$ and quaint turrets and railhoKied win- , t j dows overlooking a garden iri which ||| there were many arbors and suu\lptured : figures. When I passed it a few ago the gables and turrets had vi down, and instead of mulßonedt' ■wiftg dows there were gaping holes in blgjß ened walls. The gardens were a wfl chaos of trampled shrubberies amoH the cinder heaps, the twisted iron, a|H the wreckage of this old mansion, fl flaming torch or two had destroyed_ fl that time had spared, and the chateM of Huiron was a graveyard in whicH beauty had been killed murderously bj outrageous hands. 1 In one of these villages of Champagne! I saw one relic the other day which| had been spared by chance when the flames ,of the incendiaries had licked up all other things around, and so m e-, how—God knows why—it seemed to': me the most touching sight in this place of desolation. It was a little S stone fountain, out of which a jet of „ water rose playfully, falling with splash of water-drops into the sculptuM ed baSin. while the furnace was blasjH in the village it had played on —a sfl bol of beauty and the grace of lif eJH More awlul than the these small' villages is the of Rheims. A few days ago hfl the edge of a great battlefield ; infl pagne, and from an eyrie in I above the valley looked. acrossßj cathedral, that shrine of the bones of kings lie, and wheM stone speaks of saints and ne jß a thousand years of worship. Ifl| man guns were still firing araß and its great walls stood grim jfl tered in a wrack of smoke. F°. 3 « nine months the city of suffered, the wounds of war. SIB and air bombs, incendiaiy sheM monstrous "marmites" have ■ within its boundaries week by« sometimes only one or two on jW day, sometimes in a raging stS fire but always killing a f ewi| people, always shattering. or two, always spoiling another sculptured beauty. When I gaz« it the other day through the, s^olc guns there seemed an awful in that city's tragedy.-—Philip Gib)J» in the "Daily Chronicle." , '"~ v '■■V