COAL MINES OF LENS

Otago Witness, Issue 3382, 8 January 1919, Page 46

COAL MINES OF LENS

MAdJINERY IN RUINS. PARIS, October 5. News which reached Paris this afternoon shows that Lens coal pits have suffered enormous damage at the hands of the Germans. Approaches to pitheads have been rendered impassable by the creation of enormous craters. All the working plant, winding gear, and ventilating appliances have been destroyed and the mine galleries flooded. Many galleries also were blown up with high explosives at the' last moment before the Germans bolted. The work of repairing and getting the pits into working order again will be enormous. Lens itself is in the most frightful state of devastation imaginable. It was burned and pillaged the first time last year when the British succeeded in taking the suburb of Lievin, which enabled them to threaten the whole scattered area known under the general name of Lens. Before they were driven out in the present operations, the Germans carried out new destruction on a very large scale. Apparently their intention was to make even the very ruin disappear, as at Noyon, Bapaume, and other places. Mines were exploded in the middle of many streets and at crossings, leaving enormous craters everywhere

Unlike most British and American mining towns, Lens was a veritable garden city, where nearly every miner lived in his own house surrounded by a garden. It is now a picture of inexpressible desolation. The German object here has been evidently to cripple the French coal industry for the benefit of German trade. At Armentieres the same policy has been pursued. Armentieres was the headquarters of French table linen manufacture, with a turnover amounting to £4,000,000 a year. By destroying the linen factories at Armentieres the Germans evidently hoped to get the French trade in these goods for their own manufacturers, whose principal centres are at Westphalia and Hesse.