VICTIMS OF THE WAR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15769, 18 November 1914, Page 8

VICTIMS OF THE WAR.

HAND OF THE DESTROYER.

The victims of the war are to be met with in every train in the districts to the north and east of Paris and along every country road in the same regions.

They aro pathetic figures, for many have lost their all. They inquire of passers-by whether such and such a village has suffered from the bombardment. If he is wise and charitable in bis wisdom, the man who is questioned returns an evasive answer He may have come from the Tillage and know its utter state of ruin, but the trembling inquiry on the lips of the old peasant is too much for him. Often he adopts a tone of light cajolery. " No, no, they have clone nothing." he will declare, with an effrontery that only the cause excuses; or he will rally the aged woman under her country bonnet with— Clner up, little mother, jour house is all right."

The distress of the homeless is painful to witness. It is true that the Government will give them compensation, but that is not everything ; it is, indeed, very little. It cannot replace the accumulations of a lifetime. Gold cannot pay what has been bought with tears and sacrifice, what is enshrined in tender memories. Some of the villages arc pitiful m their nakedness and devastation. Bare walls are standing whor?, a few days ago were laughing households full of brightness and youth. The village shop where everything was sold,- from a bootlace to a candlesnuffer, is .i bleak wilderness ; it is the Germaas' little way to destroy as much as possible. Wheat and hay stacks are fired, agricultural maclynery destroyed on -the same principle which leads the enemv , to smash into a thousand atoms the local factory. It is the German system of war upon cvilian populations. It has been remarked that those villages have suffered most which were empty of functionaries when the Germans arrived. The presence of the mayor or of other local representatives seemed to have had a restraining influence. Hence those mayors who absented themselves on the day when their commune was visited by the- enemy are now feeling the effects of local unpopularity.