The Sun SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1916. WASTAGE IN RURAL FRANCE.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 872, 25 November 1916, Page 8

The Sun SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1916. WASTAGE IN RURAL FRANCE.

Recently a deputation, which included representatives of the Oversea Dominions, paid a visit to France for the purpose of seeing at first hand some of the war devastated holdings. The trip was madi hi connection with a movement among agriculturists at Home which has for its object the collection of funds, farming implements, stock, etc., in aid of the small farmers in France, whose small holdings have been wasted by the ebb and How of battle. The districts visited were those of Albert and Fricourt on the Somme, and Sir Herbert Matthews has written an unusually interesting account of the day's tour in "Land and Water." After leaving the train at Bar-le-Duc, some 80 miles due east of Paris, and about 18 miles from the famous St. Mihiel salient, the party motored through several villages all more or less shattered, but whose inhabitants, old men, women and children, still cling fondly to the partially wrecked houses and the adjacent fields. One such village, Sonnneilles, provided a splendid example of the systematic destruction practised by the invaders. Before the war Sommeillcs was a prosperous centre, sheltering a flourishing peasantry. "To-day," narrates Sir Herbert Matthews, "Unchurch walls stand, a roofless, hollow shell, the bells lie where they fell. ... On what remains of the front wall of the town hall appears in faded print the legal notice of the forthcoming I marriage of a young couple. One j wonders," he adds, "if the wedding ! took place, or if the battle intervened, and this young dream was shattered like the church." In this j district the work of reconstruction i has been begun in a temporary way. j Byres and barns are being rebuilt, and huts of a rather mean sort knocked up for human habitation, i In many instances the peasants still ! live in cellars, sometimes merely j roofed over with thatched hurdles. I But Nature is doing her best to cover I the unsightly wounds of war, and j "the new huts, with their walls fesI tooned with haricots, hung there to i ripen, help to remove the impression |of recent upheaval." It is a pathetic 1 picture. From Albert, the deputation | passed to Fricourt, where the Brit- ' ishers left the trenches on July 1 to i begin the great "push." Some of the gun emplacements, at the time of | the visit, still carried on their roof j a crop of wheat which was sown I when the adjoining field was plantled the previous autumn. On the ! crest of a hill near by is a "huge nunc crater, 40ft deep, and covering between two and three acres, where an extensive system of German dugouts was so deeply embedded that mining was the only way of moving them." The writer goes on to say \ that this part of the battle area of the Somme is a contradiction of the statement that an enemy army may burn houses, crops, and implements, and kill stock and the inhabitants, but he cannot permanently damage i the soil. Here the surface of the soil has largely disappeared. In the I first place it consisted of a thin i | chalky-clay, over pure chalk, intermixed with beds of loam over gravel. Trenching, shellpits, and mine craters have so churned up soil and subsoil that levelling will leave the surface mainly of chalk. In the opinion of Sir Herbert Matthews it does not appear commercially feasible to redeem this sj area. Possibly, he suggests, it might s j be planted with beech or other forest seedlings, and developed as a " Government undertaking, "but," he comments, "the fates forbid that any individuals should be compelled to try and wring a living from such a ground." The foregoing will convince those of New Zealand's agriculturists interested in the work of reconstruction in rural France and Belgium that there is every warrant for such a movement. The devastation depicted by Sir Herbert Matthews will be repeated on a large scale in the process of blasting the Germans back to the Rhine, and when the war is over the farmer philanthropists of the colonies will have a line opportunity to show I their generosity, and pay a proper tribute to the peasantry of our I Allies who have fought so sturdily 1 and suffered so grievously in the ! great cause.