HARVESTING ON LATE BATTLEFIELDS.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 16303, 2 December 1918, Page 4

HARVESTING ON LATE BATTLEFIELDS.

SCARRED COUNTR YSIDE STILL BEAUTIFUL. SCENE OF MARGIN'S TRIUMPH. Mr. G. H. Perris, the Daily Chronicle correspondent, with the French armies on the Oise, writes:— AVe have had a wonderful five weeks in which the armies of Mangin, Degoutee, Berthelot, and Do Mitry, then of Rawlinson and Debcney, and again of Mangin and' Humbert, with‘the aid of American, British, and Italian divisions, have shared the honours of an unbroken course of victory now carried forward by fresh British armies. But to the careful staff observers, to whom I have referred, these are only preliminaries to the general and decisive offensive of the Allies. They have been effected while yet wo have but a- very alight superiority of power—that is their promising aspect—hut they have been aided, at least south of the Somme, by two important circumstance's. The first is the character of open movement given to the war last spring by the enemy when he became certain of success owing to the Russian collapse. The second is the fact that, when stricken between Soissons and Chateau Thierry, Ludendorff realised' Marshal Foclrs" manoeuvring skill and the power of the American contingent—when he realised, that is to say, that the day of German offensives is over—the German Grand Staff rapidly reconciled itself to a general withdrawal and shortening of its front. Essentially in this conservative military view we have been harrying a retreat. AVhcn it everywhere reaches the formidable works of the- old Hindenburg lino and successive linos behind it the struggle may assume a somewhat different character.

WAR CONTRASTS. About the end there can no longer bo any doubt, for with hardly a score of divisions in reserve the German crisis of effectives becomes daily more pressing. But a seriously entrenched defence is'not favourable to spectacular triumphs of attack, and prophecy of an early and final victory is therefore premature. One sometimes feels that the dire hand of war has passed with a strange lightness over certain regions, or, to put the impression more accurately, that old Mother Earth has an extraordinary power of recovery. And then suddenly one falls upon a part of the front smashed, soiled, and degraded with a horrible completeness, apparently hcvond hope of rehabilitation. It is the contrast between fresh and old, long-harried battlefields, between the results of the war of movement and of that of fixed positions. The difference has been brought homo to me once more, and' very vividly in an examination I have just made of the field of General Mangin’s great victory, the lozenge-shaped stretch of country between the towns of Compjegne, Novon, Coucy-le-Chatcau, and Soissons. Wo came np over the open farmlands between the. forest of Villers-Cotterets and Soissons, which General Mangin wrested from the Boche on July IS and tho following days, when they had squatted upon them for only six weeks. There are clear enough traces of those recent combats before our vast change of fortune, but very little that is beyond a speedy cure. Tho cure, indeed, has begun. Beside no.v hangars on which mechanics of tho Air Force are busy, harvesters are gathering in the last stocks of wheat and oats and finishing giant hayslacks, Roadmenders —.grizzled Territorials or negroes in red fez and blue breeches—are making way for the interminable convoys that carry the wherewithal of an advancing army. Right up to the short-lived trenches one feels the invigorating touch of summer sunshine, and when we get down to tho familiar old Soissons road I am glad as a ghost returned to mortal haunts undamaged.

NEW DAMAGE TO VIC. Across tho Aisno it is quite another story. The little town of Vic, although always safely within our lines, has received new damage. There arc largo factories and villas with summer-houses and boat sheds looking down to tho riverside now all in ruins. The queer old castle in tho market place has had one of its pepperpot towers cut open, and wall paintings in an upper room, showing medieval knights in a battle or tournament, are at the mercy of wind and rain. This is only the vestibule to a scene of devastation perhaps unparalleled on tho French front. The quadrilateral lvin> r between the Rivers Aisne. Oise, and Ailette has been divided by the war crosswise into two parts, of which the lower and south-western has been a battlefield for three and a-half years, while tlie larger or north-eastern lias been for most of this time in the enemy’s possession, and has not till this last week seen serious fighting. To reach General Mangin’s now' front on. the Oise I had to cross the former region, passing on tho high, bare plateaux of Moulin-sons-Touvent and Tracy-le-Val the double system of wire and trenches that had grown up since the battle of tho Marne and will nowvanish into history. Once a vast expanse of fertile ploughland, it is now a wilderness, choked with corrupt growths, silent as the deserts and dismal swamps that man has abandoned tho hope of taming.

A WITCHES’ CARDEN. A few fragments of limestone wall surrounded by blasted tree trunks mark the sites of farms long ago destroyed. There is no other sign of human habitation. Rank grasses, thistles, brambles, and coarsely flowering weeds sprawl over the broken parapets and shell craters foul with the rottenness of three veafs’ carnage. Clouds of sandy clay and dirty chalk are blown across this witches’ garden when a lonely wagon or motor-car passes over its battered roads. Can’such a waste ever bo reclaimed, at least to public decency? Further on in the territory just won back large numbers of German cannon and machine-guns, piles of shells, and great masses of other material arc being got together and cleared away, and where this work is advanced the natural beauties of the land already begin to reappear.