FREED FRANCE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17586, 17 September 1917, Page 6

FREED FRANCE.

TILLAGES RISING FROM DEFILEMENT. (By GERALD OAmPBELL.) French Headquarters, July. ,A day or two ago I stood for half an hour outside the Garo du Nor« watching men on leave being met. by or saying good-bye to their own peopleThere was one standing there, parting from his wife, neither of them saying a word. Only they kissed each other; four times they kissed each other, anct <each kiss was dike the parting ot soul and bodv, and then, without a backward look, they went, she into tho crowd, ho to his tram. And) nxtfKjher had shed a tear. " SadP Yes, is was sad. But it was something more, than just a man and a woman saying perhaps a last farewell. It was France sending her son.'? out to keep her heritage of freedom for aW their sons that will come after thorn Next dav, as I stood on tV.(i fringeof a wood looking down on St Qucntin, where tho enemy watches to shoot at anything t'hat moves out of cover or above ground, I thought of those two again and of what St Quentiri and all the other and tortured and enslaved towns and villages of their Franco mean to them. Meanwhile, as fast as they win tho land back, the French armies arc removing, so far as tho more serious side of, war will lot them, the! defiling traces of war and tho enemy, find, building up its life again.. Yesterday I saw the most wondorful example ot tluir unquenchable energy and lightness of heart that I have yet oome. across in this way. lb was in a village —when I first visited it, tho day after the enemy left it, there was nothing left of it out piles of bricks—stretching up to 'and along tho banks of a canal, still within reach of tho German guns. To-day it is almost a village again, teeming with life, humming with mdlustry, even ringing with the band! music of two regiments. _ Everywhere among the ruins llittlo

one-storeyed houses are springing up —" for the civilians when they como back," said the officer who, with justinable pride, did me the honours of his restored kingdom. London Street and New York Street are now its main thoroughfares. Brooklyn Bridge and four other bridges, including the frail structure of planks by which the French crossed on the heels of the enemy, span the canal, on the banks of which tho Red Cross men have run up «omd neat little huts for wounded soldiers and sailors who have fever or want their teeth stopped. Jn the canal there are bathing places—real bathing places—for officers and men; farther along its banks there are more elaborate hospital huti and tents and flowerbeds and a football ground and'a spacious " United States Camp" for troops taking a rest from their work in* tho trencMos, and hot; water douches whero over 1000 men .can wash off tho dirt of the trenches in a morning.

The change from the state that tfiio place was in when the French arrived is marvellous.