GUARDIANS OF CALAIS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume IV, Issue 963, 13 March 1917, Page 7

GUARDIANS OF CALAIS.

FROM FORESTS TO FLOODS. SIDE BY SIDE ON BELGIAN SOIL. The three Western Allies (write* ;G. H. Perris in the "Daily Chron- ! icle") are all represented on Belgian 'soil—King Albert's army along the greater part of the Yser,the British on their right toward and past Ypres, the I French on their left, across the coast j road to Dunkirk and Calais. This j last is a very small, but important, : sector, consisting practically of the ! defences of Nieuporl and the neign- ! bouring coast. To pass directly, as I had done, j from the snow-covered hills and forJ ests of Lorraine to the dunes of FlanI ders, dim and raw under a North Sea [ mist, is to realise sharply the strong© .diversity of connilions to which the machinery of this war has had to be adapted. Two years had passed since I last saw the line of the Yser. Certainly much has been done in that | time to make the lot of the armies more tolerable. Supplies and com- ' munications have been created; the j agonising anxieties of those old days have long disappeared. Flanders mud is incurable, for you cannot rake the level of the whole country, or change its soil; but the main j roads are greatly improved, extended j railways have relieved much of the ! old pressure, and most of the troops j have comfortable winter quarters. A part of the French sector is fortunate in that it rests mainly on sand; and the defence works of this narrow region of the dunes effectively dispose of the old warning against building on such a foundation. At La Panne, Coxyde. and Oost-Dun-kerke, the splashing pools of black slime are left behind for the clean yellow hillocks of the shore—an inj finitely grateful change. A solid ] road carries us from one to another modest plage. The shore is guarded with fields of barbed wire, and many I batteries, light and heavy, are dug j into the sides of the sandhills. The shattered and gutted hotels, ; shops, and houses of Nieuport-Bains j now constitute a real fortress that j blocks the Ostend-Calais road. There j are trenches nearly half a mile beyond, on the north of the Yser—ridges of the dunes bolstered with j sandbags. But the town looks like | what old-time military architects would have called a typical modern fortress, with the canalised river for moat. Of course, the system cannot be described. There are passages over the river, galleries by the sea and inland, observatories, battery emplacements, points of concentration, an account of which would interest the reader —especially the reader at German headquarters. As in other parts of the front, vast works have been carried out in the past eighteen months. " L'Echo des Dunes." In one cell—between an ambulance and an officer's quarters—l found the editorial office of a journalistic confrere. "L'Echo des Dunes'* proudly announces itself as the "official journal of the sea front," and as being "entirely edited and printed on the front." It is an eightpage lithographed sheet about equally divided between sport and humour, with a separate cartoon representing one of our "tanks" devouring a German host. Some dozens of trench journals are now produced in the French armies, representing one of several considerable movements to develop their powers of self-entertainment. These efforts could and should be pushed much further. In the great base camps there are abundant means of companionable diversion, and some of general instruction. In the few large towns near the front there are usually several kinemas, very rarely anvthing to stir the mind of a serious lad. In the smaller camps and villages there is generally no help whatever toward a rational enjoyment of the longer winter evenings. Recreation for Soldiers. When I was in Nancy last week the worthy and indefatigable Prefect, M. Mirman, showed me o\er a barracks that had been transformed into a home for some hundreds of refugees. He was justifiably proud of two features in this settlement. The first was its exemplary cleanliness, a condition not exactly inborn in these poor folk, but gradually and now firmly established. The other was the large entertainment hall, with its stage and kinematogrnph apparatus, and decorafiv? material borrowed from the prefacture. "Keep them happy," said M. Mirman. "Feed their minds. That saves much grumbling, and some poMcemen.'* We have three months of long winter nights before us. The feeding, clothing and housing of the armies is accomplished. At a moment when England and France are re-manning their machines of Government, may I plead that an attempt should be made to supply conlinuous and varied amusement, with some elements of instruction, wherever as manv as a company of men are gathered toeether? The Belgian front contributes little to the daily bulletins; but its guardians, whether in blue or khaki, are showing the same resource, resolution, and energy as the men in more constantly advertised sectors. The long days of defensive waiting weigh heavy upon the strongest nerves. The piers of Nieuport stretch theirblack arms out into the grey sea mist: and our thoughts strain forward, hoping to catch some secret of the unknown future.