WITH THE FRENCH ARMY.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 April 1916, Page 6

WITH THE FRENCH ARMY.

A SUPERB FIGHTING FORCE. (From If. S. Gullett', Official Australian Correspondent with the French Army). From the Marne battleground and tiie line of the great drive to the Ai'sno you learn the cheering lesson that the European countryside quickly recovers from the ravages and horrors "of war. Over this rolling area to-day the peasants go stolidly cn with their winter tasks; the cultivation is in its proper stage and in the vineyards the stakes are neatly piled waiting the return of sunshine and growth. There is nothing in flie face of these old men and boys and women to tell of the prodigious days of little more than a year ago when within a few weeks they saw the first French march eagerly to meet the invader and come sullenly back with the triumphant Teuton pressing on their heels, the. turbulent foreign host swilling wine and insulting women and exulting in the prospect of days close nil pad in Paris; when the din of the great battle, the incredible news of its result, the. return of the invader, beaten, fearful, and well behaved, and the c'bming for the third tims of the French with their allies the British, all hurrying, chasing and enduring as men do only in the flush of a momentous victory. The simple peasants between the Marne and the Aisne saw all these things ir. detail, but it takes more time than we had to get their story from them. They have reaped a good harvest since then and sold it at war prices. For evidence of those days one must take the crosses which here and there mark the graves by the roadside, the wrecked houses and the shattered churches. Many dwellings escaped, but the churches never. REEIMS TO SOISSOttS.'' ' I passed from tho Rhine along the line of Soissons and in . the course of a few days made a number of visits to the front trenches. Let me be frank and say at once that I saw no fighting and heard only a few big gun at a distance and the flight of two rifle bullets. The experience was intensely interesting, chiefly as showing how quiet even a vital section of this Western front can sometimes become. The day after our. visit there was considerable fighting there. Rheiins which is within easy gun distance from the enemy's position was as quiet and almost as desolate as the street of Pompeii. The town is not a ruin as Ypres is. but the 'charge against' the German for his work at Rheims is infinitely blacker than it is at Ypres, Some military necessity might possibly be pleaded for the demolition of Ypres, although it would not be attempted by any nation but the Germans; for the-outrage upon Rheims there is so shred of justification. The destruction of the Cathedral has been many times told, but even Mr. Kipling's pen could not give to the world a proper sense of the tragedy which there presents itself. One can only repeat that there is overwhelming evidence that the achievement of the German gunners was deliberate and wanton and that, after France has given the specific assurance that the towers would not be used for the purposes of observation, the shelling could only have been sustained by definite orders from the highest commands. One often hears the discussion at the front as to whether the destruction of sacred old buildings is a greaer tragedy for a nation than the sacrifice of its young life; the French say emphatically that it is. It was a happy omen that as we left the niins of the Cathedral a woman of the working class crossed the shuttered street carrying a- little Christmas tree; and on iier face a happy smile. A small thing, perhaps, hut these are the things which count in this war to the end between people and people. We went out to the village of Betheny, where a few years ago men and women came from all ' Europe to tho world's. first flying meeting, and where besides the little broken church stands a monument, badly damaged by shells, but still erect, telling of the visit there in 1!>12 of the Czar Nicholas and President Loubet, one of those historic occasions which mark the development of the agreement between Russia and France which to-day is so largely responsible for the salvation of Europe.

IN THK TRENCHES, We entered the trenches ami walked a considerable distance. I asked the invitable question as to our distance from the enemy. "A few hundred yards," replied an officer. We peeped through loopholes, and becoming boldei stood up and looked at leisure over the parapet. The usual prospect—a tangled mass of barbed wire and then a strip of field with a heavy growth of decaying grass and selfgrown crops. 'The enemy," cliey said, "is just aver the ridge." Ip the course of twenty minutes we saw only two French soldiers on the parapet. I protested that this could not be the first line of trenches. "Where were the soldiers?" The officer laughed, "I will show yon." We walked some distance along the deserted ditch and came to the door of a dug-out. He lifted a canvas curtain and called. A response came from far off in the darkness. We took an electric torch and descended, -step after step, for twenty feet or more. "There," said the officer, "is the garrison, warm, dry, and ready." Some slept- on the dry straw, some read, others were writing. We looked into their faces, most af them bearded, and saw men in the primfr of life and condition, and apparently in the best of spirits. As we came into the trencher, we had passed numbers of men on their way out to rest, and hud been surprised at the absence of drawn and sleepless faces, and the coating of mud which are general with similar men in Flanders. Now we understood. Here the country was undulating and the soil light and porous, and the French had achieved trendies as dry and warm and safe—barring a heavy attack —as the homes of the defenders' wives and families. We were seeing trench life at its best; von might have worn bedroom slippers, despite, that : t was- December, and kept your feet free from damp. With outposts in position and sentries surely placed, and with artillery observers at work amVtlie famous seventy-fives vigilant and well supplied with shells, most of the men might sleep the day and night through and France have no uneasiness. It was a revelation in the best practice of war, which is, ev?ept when on the. definite aggressive, to guard life as jealously or even more jealously than in time of peace, and to give every soldier the least possible discomfort. FOOD AND EQUIPMENT. When the time arrives, floods of these young Frenchmen will rush headlong against all the death-dealing devices of which the fiermans are capable, but meanwhile they are given every consideration which is consistent with the holding of the line and the prosecution of the war. The food is, of course, different to that of the British, but on an equally generous scale. You soon learn in France that the heroic but luckless troops at Gallipoli knew nothing of how comfortably, even richly, the modern soldier within a. few ywd» 9i the entmv

can live. The French have not the English soldier's fondness for bacon and tea and rum. He gets plenty of beef and vegetables, all the bread he needs, eof Fee interminably, and a quarter-bottle of wine every second day, and much else liesides. The Government provide him with plenty of tobacco, and he commonly smokes cigarettes in summer and the pipe in winter, "to warm his hands bj,'' an olliecr told me. lie is so well dressed and equipped that when you see. him marching with his big pack you marvel at .he wonderful manner in which lie swings along the roads all day if need be at between four and five, miles an hour. He can march the British soldier to death. GRAND PHYSIQUE. • Those unaccustomed to French troops are invariably surprised at their grand physique. The Englishman at home believes that tho French fighter is a little man, who makes up for weight in agility and dash and gallantry. Taking the French Army right through, the men would probably weigh quite as much as the new armies of Britain, and they have the advantage of being more uniform in size. Another very striking feature, and one due, of course,' to conscription, is the relative uniformity in age. Under the volunteer system - irn England there has been a lot of recruiting among lads under nineteen and men above forty, whose eager patriotism has cased their conscience when their declaration wis made to the recruiting ohicer. In France this is impossible; every man is registered, and called up in turn, and he waits until called. .If Germany's Army to-day was of the age of the Army of France, the outlook of the Allies would be indifferent. But we know that it is not. Every day brings its unmistakable evidence that Germany, despite all her millions. is at the end of her reserves of men of the recognised fighting age of the best physique, and that she is putting her boys and middle-aged men into the front line.

MISERABLE GERMAN PRISONERS. We were lucky enough to see some German prisoners who hart just been captured. The French, from the generals to the soldiers, make no secret of their belief that they have the ew>my beaten. They do not, say that they can get fai into his line at a given time; they know too well that they cannot—not yet. But, as on the British front, theyi know that they have the enemy wolf hammered into good inoffensive behaviour all along the line, and at any hour they can give him a sound local thrashing. Although a general laughingly denied it, I am sure that the score of prisoners lined un for us at a Divisional Headquarters, with the mud of the German trenches not yet dry upon their clothes, had been a special capture for our edification. Little feats of that sort are now of nightly occurrence up and down this western front. We wished \\f. could have believed that these miserable, cowering lads, one of them with quivering lips and tearful eyes, were representatives of all the reserve Germany is now calling up to her many overstretched front?. But they are too deficient in fighting or many qualities to .justify lis in coming to that happy conclusion. They ranged from sixteen to nineteen years, and were about as poor and undergrown lot of mankind as it is possible to conceive. They looked a lot of physical and mental degenerates from some correction school; quite possibly they were. But although it would lie dangerous to use them for the purpose of drawing conclusions, at least one can confidently say • that such a group of wecdv undesirables could not be found j among all the millions of the armies of France and England. Their story, which was borne out by their papers, was that they came from one of the industrial provinces along the Rhine; that they were called up last May, given a little training, and sent to ihe front in October, immediately after the great Allied offensive. One carried a letter, written some days before, and returned to him by tliff German censor because in it he spoke of the horrors of the trenches and the strength of the enemy, and expressed a wish that the war was over. The French officers regarded that with special interest, because their qnftlity confirmed the general opinion that the September and October fighting definitely marked the beginning of the deterioration in the German troops. Apparently they were atfull strength, so far as first-class troops went, before that time; since then they have been obliged to fill up the ranks with men whe would never have been used had the position not been looked upon as desperate. One noted, however, that these unfortunate lads were well dressed and equipped, each one wearing sound knee boots.

A SOUTHERN KIWTMENT. As wo turned away frnin this encouraging manifestation of f.'ermany's declining power*, wo heard a hand strike up the stirring music of 'T.e Regiment y passe," and there eame swinging- down the road an ideal regiment of France's heroic infantry. The general who was with ns at the moment, a strikingly handsome man, with the presence of an old-wotld prince, stepped gravely forward to take the salute, and close to him, a little Behind, stood a staff colonel who had until recently commanded the men who were marching. Tlie colonel's features trembled with emotion •is the iroops approached.. Tliev were Southeners, men from the liasque country, big, powerful, light stepping men. in the flower of fully developed youth, and perfect physical condition: Their strides were (|»iek and springy, theii facer, singularly free from depressed or reluctance. They carried themselves as though fully conscious iiiiit they wore defenders of freedom and liberators of (lie millions of their women and children and the territory of France which still remains, although but temporarily, in the possession of the tyrant.