AFTER FIFTEEN YEARS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 284, 28 October 1933, Page 8

AFTER FIFTEEN YEARS

THE FRANCE OF TO-DAY. MEMORIES AND FEARS. The years of the Great YVar served to give the citizens of tills Dominion reason to hold in more sentimental value the French nation —and particularly that portion of the country of which the names Somme, Amiens and Bapaume arouse tender memories—and when Mr C. S. Hamlin, of Rongotea, paid a visit to England last May he made it his duty to visit the battlefields of those grim years. The experience, as related to a “Standard” reporter by Mr Hamlin yesterday, was one of sadness and of pleasure—the former because he lost a brother in the Great YVar and the latter because of the splendid manner in which the graves are being tended. The exchange difficulties did not assist the tourist, and the New Zealander’s visit was not a very extended one, hut he was able to secure a series of very fine photographs of tlie cemeteries and the war arena in general. An instance of the monetary difficulty was forthcoming in the example of paying 5s 6d in France for a film which cost only 2s 6d in England. There remain at the present time very few evidences of the great conflict. Albert has been rebuilt and Bapaume is all new. On the Somme the trees are now growing, to a height of twenty feet as Nature heals the man-made wounds. In only one place was their real evidence of the war and that was at New Flanders’ Park, an area in which still rested pieces of aeroplanes, barbed wire entanglements, helmets and scraps of the appurtenances of the battles. In another area the ploughing process turned up the chalk subsoil that had been employed to fill the trenches. The photographs conveyed an excellent impression of the care which is being exercised in the military cemeteries. Retired soldiers were at work regularly under supervision and “the crosses row on row” bear evidence of tender attention. Among the interesting photographs which Mr Hamlin procured were those of the grave of Dr. A. A. Martin, who practised in Palmerston North before the war, several copies being obtained so that his relatives in Wellington might appreciate even more fully tlie attention that his resting place is receiving. It will be recalled that the “Standard” published a photograph about two years ago. In the Mimmereaux • Communal Cemetery, which overlooks - the Straits of Dover, the view was particularly striking and there is a special appeal in tlie picture by reason of it showing the resting place of Mr P. H. Gifford, of Rongotea.. The world-known Thiepval Memorial —“To the Missing of the Somme.” so runs the inscription—is a magnificent picture as it stands to bear on its panels the names of no fewer than 73,387 missing soldiers. The Caterpillar Valley Memorial is of very special significance to Mr Hamlin for on a panel it carries the name of his brother who made the supreme sacrifice. Yet, speaking of France in 1933, Mr Hamlin had to tell his interviewer that “there are great military preparations.” He was loth to touch on this side' of the visit he paid, but he said that France is to-day a nervous country. Between Amiens and Paris there were travelling troop trains carrying from 500 to 1000 soldiers for training purposes a.t a camp established between these* two places. “France is very nervous,” said Mr Hamlin, as he called to mind the feeling shown by the people and the militarism he saw.