THE MAN WITH THE SHOVEL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18954, 30 August 1923, Page 11

THE MAN WITH THE SHOVEL.

“At the end of November, 1918, this whole countryside was a mass of ruin, chaos, and desolation. There was scarcely a square yard of earth upon which a shell had not burst,” says Mr Charles Harris Whitaker, writing in the I'reexnan about Ypres. “Over this havoc the litter and debris of the enginery of war was strewn about as though all the iron and steel from all the mills of the world had been lifted above, blown into fragments, and hurled upon what was once the happiest countryside on earth, even as little Ypres was the city that seemed most charming. “To this scene of devastation came the technicians, the scientists, the agricultural experts, the foresters, the bankers, the statesmen, the politicians. Weeks passed: in council and conference and consultation. Then the collective judgment of this carefully selected group was solemnly pronounced : devastated Flanders was beyond hope of redemption. Never again could it become the land of the plough and the harrow, the crop and the flock. “The technicians could not imagine any kind of machine that would be capable of filling up the tens of millions of shelMioles. Even if they could, the bankers shook their heads in despair at the thought of what the .machines would cost, and of what the running of them would cost, and of what the time would cost. The agricultural experts could not suggest any way by which further fertility could be wrested from this waste of wastes. “The statesmen and diplomats and politicians probably performed their eternal function of appearing to know something about something; and as a result it was solemnly agreed and given forth that nothing remained tor devastated Flanders except afforestation. “It must ail, they said, be converted into a great forest, which in time would pay a profit, which would give employment to a certain number of people; and as for the rest of the one-time inhabitants of the area, they would have to be transported to new pastures. Brajns and

learning and wisdom had looked and peered and pried—and spoken. “Then came man and his shovel, Withj no word of complaint, with no scientific suggestion or device, with no political shuffling of the dirty old cards, with no mournful pleading for aid, with no saintly protestations to heaven, the men and the women and the children took their shovels in their hands, and went down into this waste, hour by hour, day by day, week by week. “The shells in bursting had bored clear through the arable soil and down, into the subsoil, so that the whole was confusion thoroughly and completely confounded. Thus it was not only necessary to fill the .shell-holes, but the subsoil-had to be sorted out and put at the bottom and the arable soil had to be sorted out and used to make the field. The old arable soil was no more than 15in deep, and file wise peasant knew what had to be done. “Thus, knowing his land and the irresistible might of his arm and his shovel and his earth-trained eye, and knowing these things humbly and without pride and without even the outward consciousness that he know them, he plodded on until the job was done. To-day the fields of Flanders are green. _ : “Save for occasional unreclaimed bits, and the heaps of wire and the grey concrete masses, which are too difficult to demolish, and the redness of the new roofs and the youth of the new gardens, who would know that for five years and but five' years ago man had loosed a stream of hell over these places? “The man, with his arm and his shovel, with his earth-trained eye, with his plough and his harrow and his seed, has come hack into his own. What the scientists could not suggest, what the engineers could not imagine, and what the bankers did not suppose that the money could be found tor, has all been done by the plain man who knows the earth as his mother. “If only the shovellers could deal so with the other wounds—those put upon us by Governments, statesmen, diplomats) politicians, financiers, captains of industry, and by ourselves, as we turn helplessly from one of these to the other and forget the strength that is in us,” concludes Mr Whitaker.