THE LIBERATION OF LILLE

Otago Witness, Issue 3380, 25 December 1918, Page 37

THE LIBERATION OF LILLE

TOUCHING INCIDENTS,

By Philip Gibbs, in the Daily Telegraph FRANCE, October 18.

To go into Lille this morning was as 'good as anything that can come to a man who has seen four years of war, and 1 am glad that I have lived to witness the liberation of that city. I saw the joy of hundreds of thousands of people who during all those four years have suffered tragic things, unforgettable outrages to their liberty and spirit, and have dwelt under a, dark spell of fear, and have waited month after month, year after year, with a faith that sometimes .weakened, but never died, for the rescue that has now come to them. It seems a miracle to them now that it has come suddenly, and they fill their streets like people in a dream, hugging their gladness, yet almost afraid that it is « nr and- that they may wake again to find swarms of field-grey men them, and guns in their gardens and German Jaw hard upon them. I went into Lille this morning very early, feeling also that I was in-the midst of some miracle, because Lille was a world away from any road which an English soldier could pass except as a prisoner of war until last night, and now the barriers were down, and the city was quite close to our old front line. It. was early in the morning, but the streets were already thronged with people, with well-dressed women and children and men of all ages in black coats such, as one sees outside the war zone, and never before this within such close sound of the guns. It is a fine city, with broad avenues and streets and .parks where all the leaves are turned to crinkled gold, and everywhere it was draped with the flag's of England and France. They were flags which these people had hidden until this day should come, hidden carefully, for it was prison for any French civilian discovered with such symbols, and now they waved from every balcony. Around the city all bridges have been blown up—the last" act of the ..enemy at half-past 1 "yesterday morning before his. flight—and most of our troops were still on the v»est and 60uth side of the canal, and had not entered the city. But they had built foot bridges here and there, and I crossed on one and walked into the heart of people warmed to give x a great welcome to any Englishman in khaki. They opened their hearts and their arms in a great embrace of gratitude and love for those who have helped to rescue them from their bondage, and I saw the joy of vast crowds like one spirit of joy, and the light in thousands of eyes was. like sunlight about one, and in a few hours one made hundreds of friends who thrust gifts into one's hands and poured out their emotion in words of utter simplicity anl truth, and thanked one poor individual as thdugh _he were all an army and had done this _ thing alone. It was overwhelming and uplifting. HOURS OF KISSING. Before one had gone far up the first avenue of Lille one was surrounded by a great crowd. A lady broke through the ring, and, clasping both hands, said: '" I embrace you for the gladness you have brought us." She kissed one on both cheeks, and it was the signal for general embraces. Pretty girls came forward and offered their cheeks, and boys pushed through to kiss a man bending down to them, and old men put their hands on one|s shoulders and touched one's face with their grizzled moustaches, and mothers held up their children to be kissed. This did not last for a few minutes; it lasted all the time I was in Lille —for hours. Tens of thousands of people were in the streets, and my hands were clasped by many hundreds of them-, by all olose enough to take my hand. Children walked hand-in-hand with me for a little way, as though they had known me for years, and talked all the time of their gladness .because the Germans had gone. Then other children took their places, and other groups gathered, and one was dosed in by new crowds, who seized one's hands and cried: "Welcome! Welcome! Long live England!" Sometimes the same.'faces reappeared. One continued conversations begun at one end of the street. One made closer friends with people who had given all their friendship offered, : all hospitality, after one minute.

Everyone began their conversation in English, though most of them finished in French. "Good morning ! Good day I How are you? We are very glad to see you! We have great joy to-day.' For everybody in Lille has been, learning these words, so that they might say them when this day of deliverance came; and now they said them gladness. But many times in the crowd* I heard English voices, and ladies came forward a little, and the groups parted so that,we might talk. They, ad been caught in Lille when the Germans came, and had suffered this four years' agony. " Wo have longed for this day," said one of them, "and now it is like a dream. We can hardly believe that all those grey men have gone and that we are free." Several of them spoke of two Englishwomen' who have done splendid, work in Lille -for English prisoners—Miss Wood and Miss 7 Butler, who devoted themselves to help men. who were helpless, and whose sufferings, as I shall have to tell, were frightful. There are nearly 100 English peoDle now in Lille, and I think I must have met half of them to-day here and there in the crowds, for just a clasp of bands and a word or two. There were English wives of French officers, and English schoolgirls and little governesses. And they were out in the streets with flowers and flags. Some of these flowers lie beside me as I write, and next to them cigars and cigarettes and little cakes thrust into my hands by people with light in their eyes —the light that was better than sunshine in the heart of Lille. I see all these figures again as I write. A little boy dressed as a Zouave, with a great tricolour waving above his yellow hair. Two sisters and two brothers -who kept close, telling all the tale of their four years' life in Lille straightly as 10 an elder brother, laughing a little now and then at all their sufferings and all their fears, now that the spell has been lifted. doctor of Lille, who took me into his house, where I rat in a pretty salon and drank a glass of wine with him, and saw his secret cupboard where he had hidden his brass ornaments from the enemy, who had demanded every scrap of brass in Lille; and in these apartments, as elegant as any-*ln London or Paris, a 9 though a thousand miles remote from war, though only a mile or two now, I heard many things of German brutality and German oppression and tbe tragedy of the besieged city. Then there was an English clergyman who for four years has ministered to the English

wounded and recited prayers over English dead Mr Mooro "is his name, and his housekeeper .is Miss Browne, of Beverley, in Yorkshire; and his cat is called Bunny; and he has people in England who will do glad to hear, after all this time, that clergyman and housekeeper and cat have survived the ordeal of war all this time. LANOASHIRES IN THE CITY. To thoso people it was wonderful that they have regained their liberty by the arrival of British troops—there are Lancashire men in Lille to-day—but it is no less astonishing to us to go inside that city—in 20 minutes by motor car from our old lines at Armentieres. I passed through Armentieres to-day, a mass of shapeless ruin, and thought of all the death that has been there while Lille remained an unattainable place. Thousands of our men have fallen round here in four years of terrible fighting, and in April last, after the German offensive, when they drove through Armentieres itself, Lille seemed further away than before, and that to many of our men was all the way from life audi death. Now this morning, I passed the last rubbish-heaps of ruin, the last dead tree-stumps, the last shell-craters, and barbed-wire, the last dead horses on the rood, and came very quickly to that great city beyond the canal, so close to us and' so far, where there are fine churches, colleges, shops, factories, private houses, and an enormous population, rich people and poor, all under the evil spell of German rule, all passionate against its. tyrannies, torn with emotions and agonies that Were hidden from us until to-day. I wonder if any of our sentries in the trenches by Chapello d'Armentieres ever established spiritual contact with that city, full of human yearning, as he stared over the parapet and saw through-the mists the tall chimneys of Lille. Women lay awake, as they told me to-day, and cried out: " When will the English come?" Children wept themselves to sleep, as their mothers told me this morning, because another day had passed and the English had not come. "We had so long to wait for you; so very long," said .many of these people to-day. DEPORTATION OF 8000 GIRLS. After the first terror of the German occupation and the first nagging of the law which regulated all their lives forbade them to be out in the streets after a certain hour—B o'clock in the evening—shut them up in their houses like naughty children at 3 in the afternoon when the German Commandant (Heinrich) was annoyed with .some complaint, one of their worst days came when, a few days before Easter, 1916, 8000 young women of Lille were forcibly seized and sent away ,to work in the fields hundreds of miles from their homes. It was a reign of terror for every girl in Lille and for their parents. Different quarters in town were chosen for this conscription of girls, and machine-guns were posted at each end of the street, and families were ordered to gather at their doorways when the German officers oame round and made an arbitrary choice, and said to one girl "You" and to another "You," and then ordered their men to take them. .• Mr Moore, a clergyman, told mo that some girls he knew. were dragged out of their beds and carried screaming away. They were girls in all conditions of life, and one young girl I met torday told me she was chosen, but escaped by threatening to kill herself rather than go. For it was to be a life of misery and horror to any girl of decent instincts. One of them who was taken and spent six months in this forced labour told me that she had no change of linen all that time, and slept on a truss of straw in an old bam. At first men were put into the same barn with them, and then only women. They never had enough to eat in the early days, though the food was better later, and many of these girls fell ill from hunger, and their brothers, who were also token, . suffered more. Unspeakable things happened, and there is no fojgiveness in the hearts of those who suffered them. That was the first exodus from Lille, and the second happened 12 later, when 12,000 men and boys were sent away farther into German lines, so that their labour should not be given us. " I wept when my poor boy was taken," said a lady this . morning. He. was only 14, and such a child in' his heart." They were laden with heavy packs, and kept in the citadel for two nights before leaving, with little food, apd when they were assembled their sisters and mothers walked with them as far as they were allowed, weeping and crying, and the boys and men tried in vain to hide their own tears, and it was a breaking of hearts. More than two years ago a t German commission visited Lille, and all the machinery was removed from the great textile factories, which made the wealth of the city, with that of Roubaix and Tourcoing. Millions of pounds' worth of machinery were taken, and what could not be taken was smashed. It was a deliberate plan to kill the industry of Northern France. A thousand times a day I heard the words, " Monsieur, they are robbers. They stole everything we had worth anything to them, our brass, our metal of all kinds, our linen, clocks, draperies. They even took bells out of our churches, and that is why there are no bells ringing because of our deliverance." CRUELTY TO OUR PRISONERS.

Among the worst cruelties done by the Germans was the treatment -of oar prisoners. From Mr Moore, the clergyman, and from an American doctor, and" from other witnesses, I heard dreadful things of our men's, sufferings. Most of Jthem were kept in the citadel at Mons-eh-Barceul, outside the city, and from that place drafted to dig trenches. There were about 800 of them there at a time, and it was, eaid Mr Moore, a Black Hole of Calcutta. They were always half-starved, so that they wero almost too weak to walk. " I looked Into young faces," said the clergyman, "and thought, 'I shall be called to bury you in a day or two.'" French women smuggled bread to them at great risk of imprisonment; and sometimes the old German Landsturm men turned their heads away and 'encouraged this, in disobedience of orders. The eick and wounded were tended by sisters of charity and French ladies, who waited on them and 6aw frightful things without flinching, beoauso of their courage. "We owe a big debt to those women," said Mr Moore, "and England should be grateful to them." The treatment of our officers was much better than that of our men, and especially when they were dead did the enemy take trouble in giving them military honours. But for the living men who were private soldiers this imprisonment was torture. Ono does not wish at this stage of the war to stir up passion and desire for revenge—God knows there is no need of that, —but these things must be written in history, and I write them now, knowing their truth. In this city of Lille I have heard a. thou-

sand thing's of tragedy even in one day's -visit. In the hearts of the people there aro thousands of other memories. One scene described to me had the German Emperor as its central character. He came to Lille in April last, when the German offensive in Flanders was in full force, and they had taken Kemmel. From 6.30 in the morning until 2.15 soldiers were drawn ap in the streets to await the man who symbolised the might of the German arms,_ and is now bearing the burden of all its crimes. When he passed at last on the way to Kemmel thero was only one company of German soldiers who cheered him with a mechanical "Hoch ! Hoch I" All the others maintained a dead silence, and the Kaiser passed down their lines with gloomy looks on his way to Kemmel Hill. Those were the worst days for the people of Lille — during the last offensivvo m Flanders, when we lost Armentieres and Kemmel, and the British army was but a thin line holding back the tide. '' We gave ourselves up for lost," some of the peoplo told me. "It eeemed that all our faith and all our patience had been in vain. We cried out to God in despair. But that lasted only a little while. We steeled ourselves again and said:'Franco and England cannot bo beaten. We must win in the end.' And your men helped us. Your prisoners were brought through our streets, muddy, exhausted, covered with blood, some of them, but they held their heads high, so proudly, oh! so proudly, and some of them said as they passed: 'lt's all right. We shall have them yet. We shall come back on them.' Then we mid: 'lf those boys speak like that after all they have suffered, we must not lose heart,' and we were comforted." HOW THE GOOD NEWS CAME.

Worse even than the treatment of the British prisoners was that of the Russians. "Oh! they were treated like dogs," said a, girl. Two hundred and! forty British soldiers lie buried in Lille, but 3000 Germans lie buried there too. "Once when I was burying three of our men," said Mr Moore, "the German pastor was burying 76 of his own soldiers." The-number of their dead appalled them, and as year by year their losses piled up and still there was no end and no victory, even the braggarts were silenced and gloom took possession of all of them. The most arrogant changed their tone, and in these last days it was easy to see defeat written on the German faces, and many men made no sGcrot of it. The American doctor, was friendly with a young German who' had' an English mother and was a nice fellow, and it is he who brought tidings of the strange things about to happen. It was past midnight on September 30 that the doctor heard ringing at his door bell. He went down frightened—a sudden summons like that was always frightening—and opened the door and saw his friend. "What are you doing at this hour?" he asked. The young German was white and haggard. "I must tell you a strange secret," he said in a whisper" "I promised to let you know when to leave in case Lille were abandoned by us, and there was risk of bombardment. That time has come. To-night 1500 men are leaving Lille, and in a little while it will be evacuated." There were other signs of approaching flight under the, pressure of the British, troops. All the bridges were mined. German guns were placed on the Inner side of the canal and fired to the British lines, which seemed to come nearer every day, judging by the roar of the cannonade. "The English are coming," said the people of Lille, and held their hands to their throats, and ; could hardly breathe because of their excitement. They were sick and white with hope. And so it happened yesterday and to-day I went into Lille, but even now, like those I met. can hardlv believe that all this is true. There are no bells ringing with joy in Lille, because the belfries/have been robbed, but every human 1 bein,£ in that city, or almost everyone—for perhaps there are some poor creatures too beaten by life's ironies even for the joy of deliverance —is warmed by the fire of spiritual gladness so that in a few hours they have been repaid for all their cold day's when they sat in Lille without coal and very little food, and hope that had worn rather thin, and for the tears they have shed, and the patience with which they stifled their impatience burning like a fever in them. Lille is a city of splendid l thanksgiving, and the name of England is spoken on the lips of its people and of its children as a magic word to which thev owe their rescue.