FRANCE TO-DAY.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 15221, 20 May 1920, Page 6

FRANCE TO-DAY.

.<>. LIFTS HERSELF FROM RUINS. I wish everyone could sec Northern France, particularly the Ohatcau-Thierry-Soissous-Rhcims area (writes Eliot Wadsworth, special correspondent of the New ¥ork Post). The change from conditions of the past two years is almost unbelievable. In 1918, just before the great battle of Picardy, this country was filled with French troops, batteries, and transport awaiting the expected spring drive of the Huns. In 1919 you could not move half a mile without finding Americans in ones, twos, or hundreds. To-day you can drive miles without seeing a uniform; tbe only evidence of an army is in the great piles of shells, barbed wire, and debris along the roads, where they arc being gathered up by squads of Indo-Chinese workers. Instead of a constant flow . of motor transport, open cars, staff limousines, motor-cycle side cars, there is now only an occasional peasant cart, with its big wheels and string of horses, lumbering along the road. The cracking whip of the driver is the only noise which disturbs tbe quiet and peace of the .countryside. You may motor for an hour along tho perfect roads without meeting a car. Shortage of gasolene aud difficulties of railroad transportation, which interfere with proper distribution, makje motoring in France today no simple pastime. in all this territory of the ChateauThierry salient there is hardly a house untouched by shell fire and there is hardly a field untouched by tho plough. Tho people have come back. They arc living in cellars -or small wooden barracks — the most temporary or emergency quarters answer the purpose— and every hour is given to the land. Houses and barns will come in future years. They must wait until the land bas done its best. Shell holes and trenches are filled; barbed wire by the ton is rolled up. Across the fields, as far as the eye can reach, may be seen the lines of big French horses or yokes of four or six oven steadily plodding along. Every member of the family is able to help. Guiding die team, the plough, or the harrow is within the capacity of old and young alike. These people are pioneers once more, but in quite a different way from the American pioneers. They come back to a country with perfect roads, well-estab-lished boundaries, the railroad, telegraph, telephone, motor truck and many other facilities. Their lot is not that of the American pioneer. It is tho comparison with what they have lost that hurts. Houses, capital, much of their live stock have gone. All the heirlooms handed down from past generations have been destroyed. The present generation starts again to build for the future. These people are infinitely better off than the peasants on this land of one hundred- or even fifty years ago. It will not take long to build up from the soil a civilisation equal to Or better than that which has been wrecked » by the German invasion. That they are going to do it, there can be no doubt. In the cities tho problem is qui to different. Rheims had a population of 120,000 before the war. -Now it is estimated that 60,000 people find lodging and a living in the ruins. Practically not a bouse or building is untouched by shell fire. A very large number are destroyed. Exposure to the weather for three or four years has added to the damage. Temporary boarding has made some houses and hotels habitable. Around the station are many wooden barracks. Electric /lights are again intermittently available. Gangs of men aro stringing wire for the dilapidated strcot railway not yet in operation. Sightseers are everywhere and the souvenir vendors are doing a thriving trade. The cathedral in its majesty ruin is "holcrnphnd hundreds of times a day. But there is not a true beginning for the rehabilitation of a splendid prosperous city, and the future is not as clear ns is that of the farmer on his own land. All the complicated details of industry must be buitt up. Labor, capital, machinery, markets for products, housing must slowly fit together to make a city over nsrain. -- .Patching and » tourist trade ar^ not enough. Soissons is\more wrecked than Rheims. Fisnies. still worse, is a souvenir of good Anioiienn ar/PWv practice, as a French These cities and many others in the wn- fi..<^ pi] the way to the Channel make the complete revival of France a work of many years and much saving and har.l work. This is the colcl gray dawn of tho morning after. Tho excitement is. over; the 'Music of war has died away. There must bo many a headache, as woll as heartache, among these plodding, struggling men and women, who labor- from dnwn to dark. Thero is little of joy in the present, and yet (hoy are stendilv at work among the crosses on which hung the blue helmets in bonornblo memory of men who saved this land for those who have como back to build again.