LA BELLE FRANCE.

Otago Witness, Issue 3327, 19 December 1917, Page 67

LA BELLE FRANCE.

(By Sec.-Lieut. F, J. Sleath.)

The soldier no longer speak- of "La belle France," for the France li sees is no longer beautiful. Districts remote from the battle-front retain all then ancient charm. But the soldier does not see tbeso districts. That is why he no longer uses the term, or, if he does so, only Id express a memory, a haunting memory which, tugs sadly at his heart-strings. Virgil, in one of the books oL tha JEneid, described the country surroiraaing the entrance to Hades. Even a foreign tongue cannot hide from the unskilled: reader the desolation of the picture which he paints. Perhaps a reincarnation of Virgil will use the old modes of expression to depict the country behind the lines in France." For to-day, "from Switzerland to the sea. there stretches a broad belt of country, where no life is to be seen, where "scarce a brick remains standing on another, where the blackened, useless fields stink with foulness and stagnation. France has fought three blood} years of -war. The flower "of her manhood has been all that while at grips with deaththrough more than a thousand days. Yet her soldiers fight on with eve greater courage. For they remember the fairness of their country, and know how that fairness has been "trampled upon. So, too. it is the memory of the green fields of England, contrasted with the present awfulness of the derelict land behind the trenches, which makes the Briton fight so steadfastly in France's ; for his heart has" gone out to the men of his gallant Ally, to whom in victory or defeat the same sorrow is ever present, who never utters the name of their beloved country without choking over the words.

The pilot is about to fly his machine (o France. The aeroplane stands at one end of the spacious aerodrome enclosure, its front wings shaking gently in the morning breeze, its wires, new and rust-proof, glistening in the sun. The huge engine, carefully "streamlined," is humming rhythmically. Everything; is in order. The critical eye cannot detect a flaw. He climbs up to his seat and loads his guns. "All clear!" he shouts. .The machine darts forward over the smooth ground. With a sudden upward movement ft glides into the air, and goes on climbing'" steadily until, to the onlookers, it has become a v mere speck in the sky. The pilot looks down on the earth beneath, on the network of roads, en the

regular patchwork of fields and meadows, with farms and villages appearing on them like so many pieces of a chequer-board. There is sorrow in those homes —the sorrow of war; but the beauty of the landscape is unmarred. Above is the peerless blue of the sky, beneath the rich gold and green of the earth, with a forward setting of shimmering silver from the Channel and North Sea. Never did tho light of the sun unfold a more pleasing picture. "La belle Angleterre 1" murmurs tho pilot.

Behind him is the Channel, beneath him the laud of France. The fields are still green a/id gold; the houses and villages still as trim and distinct; but the roads are whiter and more dusty, showing the passage of a greater traffic Along these roads curling threads.of khaki can be seen emerging from, or entering, the white tent masses or the darker hutment blurs, which denote the presence of depots and training camps. The country is swarming with troops; it is a nursery of war. - Not so far distant is ■ war's finishing school. The pilot can see it even now. Each moment of his flight brings the view nearer. Gone is the green and the gold of the fields. The rich colouring has merged into the dull brown and grey of a skeleton, trampled land. Even the threads of khaki have disappeared. It is a Stygian waste of broken homesteads and erupted subsoil—a country of the dead, whose only movement is the flash of heavy artillery, whose only sound is the roar of battle. And "La belle France" was once its name.

Thirty years of preparation for war by the Kaiser created that waste of land within the borders of France. The system of government, of which he is the head, enabled him to direct the energies of his people to whatever end he- willed, as it gave him the power to use the mighty engine of destruction which they had forged, whenever he thought the moment opportune. It is- significant of the nature of the struggle that against him are arrayed all the great democracies of the world. While he retains his power every country of the world is liable to have the battle-front desert planted within its bounds, even as it is in France to-day. Until his armed tyranny is broken, until freedom, has triumphed, war will go on.— Per favour of the Secretary of the Royal Colonial Institute.