THE NEW YPRES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18455, 17 January 1922, Page 7

THE NEW YPRES

AMAZING RECOVERY. WORK IN DEVASTATED AREAS." Tho Times of November' 30 contained the irom a special correspondent:—'; It was more tiiaa two years «ince I visited toe whole of the area which 1 am jibout to describe. Having known it before, during, and imediately alter the vvur, and again ih. i9iii, and oeing Ware ot tho , appalling dimcui(ics which had conlronted the Belgian Government in the wort ot reconstruction, I was anxious to see for myself how things wore getting on. Last weuk, therefore, in the course of two brilliant days of bitter frost, I explored, I in the, agreeabla company of a Belgian gentleman who was not only one of the oest imaginable authorities on the subject of reconstruction, but had served throughout the war with the British Army in these very parts, tho country lying f 6n and adjacent to the following route: Courtrai, Menin, Uomines, Hill 60, Ypres, Poperinghe, Kemmel, Zonnebeke, Moorsiede, Rouiers, Staden, Dixmude, i<'urnes, Nieuport, and Ostend. i It is no exaggeration to say that I was utterly amazed by what I /Saw. At my last visit one had driven hour after hour through a wilderness of shell-holes and rank grass, from a village which had been entirely blotted off the face of the earth to a town of which the few walls left standing averaged perhaps 3it in height, and one had lound the pioneers of/the returning population living miserably in Nisseri iiuts and squalid' shanties. To-day the shell-holes are tne exception; they have been filled in with tho spade and ploughed over with motor cultivators, and wJiere there used to bo the foul and rugged wilderness are now clean and level lieids. At the time of the Armistice there were 200,000 acres of land which' had been laid waste; 1 should doubt if there were now one-twentieth of this area not under cultivation. The crops have been as good as, or better than, ever. Only at the edge of the former inundated area I remember noticing in the past a slight change or colour in the stalks. And yet' we used to think that land would need years to recover from the salt wafer! Generally speaking, and apart from the absence of any living or unriddled tree, there is practice liy nothing about the ilandsoape 'to suggest that it has ever been devastated at all. A few tanks remain stranded where they were; one passes little dumps of wire and shells and, an abundance of | concrete pill-boxes sinking lopsidedly into I the mud. But until noon, when the daily destruction of ammunition begins and the boom of muffled explosions comes from afar, it would be easy, throughout most of the battle area, to forget altogether the dreadful years which filled the air with tumult and drenched the very soil beneath our feet with blood. WELL-KEPT CEMETERIES The cemeteries, with their endless rows of wooden crosses, bring back remembrance with a, shook.. Of these I visited all within' reach,, and was delighted to find them uniformly well kept. In all the British cemeteries (I think) there were British exsoldiers at work, (tending the turf and plant-, ing; nor did our arrival affect in any way v their steady toil. It is pleasant to think how beautiful these cemeteries will become when, in the course of years, they are compassed about with shady trees A new feature of the landscape since two years ago is the springing up> of farms. On sees them everywhere, with their bright red roofs and spacious barns. Some of them_ are a great improvement on the old buildings. But it is, for tho most part, onlv in the case of the fa i iris that the people have taken advantage of tho rebuilding to bring their houses up to date. As a rule they have simply put them back | exactly as they were before. How they have succeeded in doing so without the old plans is very remarkable. But, so far as I know, there is not a crooked street in a town which is to be made straight or a seventeenth-century gable which is not being reproduced exactly in the old bricks. Thus Ypres, about which there has been bitter controversy, is already half rebuilt. In a year from now it will bo indistinguishable, so (far as the mass of the streets is> concerned, from the Ypres of August, 1914. "Only 6000 are absent of the 17,500 inhabitants of before , the war. Here, as in all the other towns, there is a wonderful buzz of activity. Look where you will, it is nothing but houses going up. The Churcii of St. Pierre is finished, to tho top of tho walls. " There are many large convents in full working order. Before long there will be a proper water supply.As for tho Cloth Hall, it must not be supposed, from recently published photographs showing the tower enveloped in scaffolding, that anything in the nature of restoration is going on. All that is happening is that the ruins are being made safe. The wall on tho west side of the tower, indeed, which used to lean perilously outwards towards' the Grand Place, lias not only been put upright, but has been built up level so ae to enable several of the original statues to be restored 4o their niches. INARTISTIC SOUVENIRS. To the east of tho tower, _ all that has been done is to clear out the interior of the building and arrange in it groups of statues and other carved stones originally belonging to the hall. The effect is very good, and it is impossible to see any better way of dealing with the .ruins. But J still' remain to be convinced of the propriety of placing, at the end of all this mass of perished beauty, two hideous Germuu howitzers and two field gi9M. The idea is obvious—but I am sure that in due course it will be seen to be inartistic. , The Cathedral of St. Martin has similarly been cleared and tho columns of the nave have been -re-erected to a height of 10ft with stones which formerly belonged to thnrn. Very littlei more _ remains to be done but turfing and fencing to complete in a worthy manner this marvellous collection of monuments of the war. The Grand Place itself is rapidly resuming its pre-war aspect, and, in spito of local pig-headedness. I believe that the Belgian Government will succeed in preventing its desecration by such atrocities of private architecture as defile some of the streets of Lou vain.