ON THE HEIGHTS OF THE MEUSE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11718, 7 June 1916, Page 2

ON THE HEIGHTS OF THE MEUSE.

THE SPLENDID SPIRIT OF THE FRENCH. DEATH THEIR CONSTANT COMPANION. but they smile in the face OF DANGER. (News was recently received of tho death' from heart failuro of tho wellknown American writer and war coi respondent, Richard Harding Davis. Tho following was one of tho last of his articles furnished to tho American Press.) It is an old Baying that tho busiest man always scorns to lvavo tho most leisure. It is another way of complimenting him on his genius for organisation. , When you visit a real man of affairs you seldom find him surrounded by secretaries, stenographers and a battery or telephones. As a rule there is nothing on his desk save a photograph of his wife and a roso in a glass of water. Outside tho headquarters of tho General there vcre no gendarmes, no sentries, no panting automobiles, no mudflecked ch;isseurs-a-cheval. Unchallenged, tho car rolled up an empty avenue of trees and stopped besido an empty terrace of ail apparently empty chateau.

Ai one end of tho terraces w as a pond and in it floated sfeven beautiful swans. They wero the only living things in sight. I thought we had stumbled upon the country home of some gentleman of elegant leisure. AVhen ho appeared the manner of the General assisted that impression. His courtesy was so undisturbed, his mind so tranquil, his conversation so entirely that of the polite host. You felt ho was masquerading in tho uniform of a General only because ho knew it was becoming. He glowed with ealth and vigour. Ho had tho appearance of having just come indoors after a satisfactory round on his private golf links. Instead lie v had been receiving reports from twentyfour different staff officers.

His manner suggested ho had no mora serious responsibility than feeding broad crumbs to the .seven stately swans. Instead ho was responsible for the lives of 170,000 men and fifty miles of trenches. His duties wero to feed the men threo times a day with food, and all day ans night with ammunition, to guard them against attacks from gases, burning oil, bullets, shells; and in coun-ter-attacks to send them forward with the bayonet across hurdles of barbed wire to distribute death. These were only a few of his responsibilities. EVERY POILU FOR 500 MILES. I knew that somewhere in tho chateau there mu6t bo the conning tower from which tho General directed his armies, and after luncheon asked to be allowed to visit it. It was filled with maps, in size enormous, but rich in tiny details, nailed on frames, pinned to the walls, spread over vast .drawing boards. But to the visitor more marvellous? than the maps showing the French lines were those in which were set forth the German positions, marked with the place occupied by each unit, giving the exact situation of tlie German trenches, the German batteries, giving tho numerals of each regiment. "With these spread before him tho General has only to lift the hand telephone and - direct that from a spot on a map on one wall several tons of explosive shells shall drop on a spot on another map on tho wall opposite. The General does not fight only at long distince from a map. Each morning he visits some .part of tho fifty miles of trenches What later he sees on his map only jogs his memory. It is a sort of shorthand note. Where to you are waving lines, dots and crosses, he .beholds valleys, forests, miles of yellow trenches. A week ago, during a bombardment, a brother General advanced into the first trench. His chief of staff tugged at his cloak. " My men like to see fiie here," said the General. A shell killed him. But w.ho can protest it was a lifo Wasted P Ho made it possible for every poilu in a trench of 500 miles to say, " Our Generals do not 6Qiid us where they will not go themselves." We left the white swans smoothing their feathers, and through rain drove to a hill covered closely with small trees. Tho trees were small, becauso the soil from which they drew sustenance was only one to three feet deep. Beneath that was chalk. Through these woods was cut a runway for a toy railroad. It possessed the narrowest of narrow gauges, and its rolling stock consisted of flat cars three feet wide, drawn by splendid Percherons. " THE MARQUIS'S EXPRESS. The livestock, the rolling stock, the tracks and the trees on either side of the tracks were entirely covered with white clay. Even the brakemen and the "locomotive engineer who walked in advance of the horses wero completely painted with it. And before we got out of tho woods so wero tho passengers. This railroad feeds the trenches, carrying to them water and ammunition, and to the kitchens in tho rear uhcooked food. Tho French marquis who guided " Mon Capitaine " and myself to the trenches either had built this railroad or owned a controlling interest in it, for he always spoko of it proudly as "my express," my special train, "my, petite vitesse." He had lately been in America buying cavalry horses. Concerning them he has a most intimato knowledge, as for years he has owned one of the famous racing stables of France. Tho last time I had seen him ho was in silk, mounted on one of his own thoroughbreds, and the crowd, or that part of it that had backed his horse, was applauding him; and, while he waited for permission to dismount, he was smiling and laughing happily. Yesterday, when tho plough horses pulled his express train off tho rails, ho descended and pushed it back, and, in consequence, was splashed, not by the mud of tho raco track, but of the trenches. Nor in tho misty, dripping, rain-soak-ed forest was there anyone to applaud him. But ho was still smiling and laughing, even more happily. NOTHING BUT CHALK AND SIvY. The trenches wero dug around what had been a chalk line, and it was difficult to tell whero tho mining for profit had stopped and tho oxcavations for defence began. When you can sec only chalk at voUr feet and chalk on either hand, and overhead tho empty sky, this ignorance may be excused. In tho bajoux, that began where the railroad stopped, that was our position. Wo walked through an endless grave with walls of clay on top of which was a scant foot of earth. It looked liko a layer of chocolate on tho top of a cake.

In sorno i>laces, under foot was n corduroy path of sticks, like the false bottom of a rowboat; in others we splashed though open sluices of clay and rain weter. You slid and skidded, and to hold yourself erect pressed with each hand against the wot walls of the endless grave. Wo came out upon the "Hants do Mouse.'' They are called also tho

province, as arc the cliffs of Dover to tli© County of Knit, they aro a na* tural barrier. Wo were in tlio quarry that had been cut into tho top of tho heights on the side that now faces other heights held by tho enemy. Behind us roso a sheer wall of ehalk as high as a five-storey building. Tho face of it had been' pounded by kliolls. It was as undismayed as tho whitewashed wall of a schoolroom at which generations of small boys havo Hung impertinent spitballs. At iho edge of the quarry the floor was dug deeper, leaving a. wall between it and tho enemy, and behind this wail wero tho posts of observation, the machine guns, tho raised step to which the men spring when repulsing an attack. Below and back of them wero the shelters into which, during a bombardment, they disappear. Thev wero roofed with great beams, on top of which wero tho baps of cement piled three end four yards high. RISE AND LIE DOWN WITH DEATH. Not on atcounfc of the sleet and fo<* but in spite of them, tho aspect of the place- was grim And forbidding. You dul not see as at some of the. other fronts, on tho .signboards that guide the men through tho maze, jokes and nicknames. Iho mess huts and sleeping caves boro no such ironic titles as he Petit Cafe," tho « Anti-Boscho.'' chez Maxim. They wero designated only by numerals, business-like and brier. It was no placo for humour. The niouuments to tho dead wero too much m evidence. On every front tho men mo and ho down with death, but on no other front had I found them living so-close to the graves of their former comrades. Where a man had fallen, there had ho been buried, and on every hand you saw between tho chalk huts, nt the mouths of the pits or raised high in a niche, a pile of stones, a cross and a soldier's cap. " Where one officer had fallen his men had built to his memory a mausoleum. It was also a shelter into which, when j tho shells come, they divo for safety. So that, even in death, ho still protects them. I_ was invited into a post of observation, and told to mako my entranco quickly. In order to exist, a/post of observation must continue to look to tho enemy only like part of the wall of earth that faces him. If through its apparently solid front thero .flashes, even for an instant, a ray of sunlight, ho knows that the ray comes through a peephole, and that, behind tho peopholo men with field glasses arc watching him. And with his shells hs hammers tho post of observation into a shambles. Accordingly, whon you enter one it is etiquette not to keep the door open any longer' than is necessary to squeeze past it. As a rule, the door is a curtain of sacking, but hands and bQdies coated with clay, by brushing against it, havo made it quite opaque. - CUT OUT BY THE CENSOR.

The post was as small as a chartroom, and the light only camo through the peepholes. You got a glimpso of a rack of rifles, of shadowy figures that made wav_ for you, and of your captain speaking in a whisper. When you put your eyes to the peephole it was like looking at a photograph through a stereoscope. But, instead of seeing the lake of Geneva, the Houses of Parliament, or Niagara Falls, you looked across a rain-driven valley of mud, on the opposite side of which was a hill.

(Here the reader kindly will imagine three stickfuls of printed matter dovoted to that hill, it was an extremely interesting hill, but my captain, who also is my cerigor, decides that wliat I wrote was entirely too interesting, especially to Germans. So, the hill is "strafed." He says I can begin again vaguely with " Over there.") " Over there/' said the voice' in the darkness, ''is St Mihiel." For more than a year you had read of St Mihiel. Communiques, maps, illustrations had made it famous and familiar. It was tho town that gave a name to tho German salient, to the point thrust in advanco of what should bo his* front. You" expected to see an isolated hill, a promontory, some position of such strategic value as would explain why for St Mihiel the lives of thousands' of Germans had been thrown like dice upon a board. But except for the obstinacy of tho German mind, or, upon the part of the Crown Prince, the lack of it, I could find no explanation. Why tho German wants to hold St Mihiel, why he ever tried to hold it, why if it so pleases him, he should not contiuo to hold it until his whole lino j is driven across tho border, is difficult to understand. For him it is certainly an expensivo position. It lengthens his lines of communication and increases his need of transport. It eats ..up men, eats up rations, cats up priceless ammunition, and it leads to nowhere, eufilades no position, threatens no one. j It is like an ill-mannered boy stick- j ing out his tongue. And as ineffective. ' " OVER THERE " IS ST MIOIEL. Tho physical aspect of St Mihiel is a broad sweep of meadow land cut in half 1 by the Meuso flooding her banks, and the houses of the Fermo Mont Meuse. On each side of the salient aro the French. Across tho battlcgrouud of St Mihiel I could see their trenches facing those in which wo stood. For, at St Mihiel, instead of having the lino of the enemy only in front, the German has it facing him and on both flanks._ Speaking not as a military strategist but merely as a partisan, if any German commander wants that kind of a position 1 would certainly make him a present of it. The colonel who commanded the trenches possessed an enthusiasm that was beautiful to see. He was as proud of his chalk quarry as a.n admiral of his first. Dreadnought. He was as isolated as though cast upon it lock in mid-ocean. Behind him was th-? dripp.rg forest; in front the mud valiov filled with floating fogs. At his feet in tho chalk floor the shells had gouge' l oit holes as dee]) as rain barrels. Othbr shells were liable at any moment to gouge out more liole^. N<£\V FACTS ABOUT GAS.

Unt'l this war the colonel had commanded in Africa the regiment into which criminals are drafted as a punishment. To keep them in hand requires both imagination and the direct methods of a bucko mate on .a whaler. When tho colonel was promoted to his present command he found tho men did not pi.ico much confidence in the gas masks, so h-j tilled a shelter with poisoned air, equipped a squad with protectors find oidered them to enter. They went without enthusiasm, but when they found they could move about with impun ;i y the confidence of the entire con mnr.«i was gained. Tlio colnml was very vigilant against these gas attacks. He had equipped tho only shelter I have seen devoted soloiv to the preparation of defences against them. We learned several new facts concerning this hideous form of warfare. Ono was that the Germans now launch the gas most frequently at night when the men cannot see it approach, and, in consequence, before they can snap tiie masks into place, they nro suffocated and, in great agony, die. They have learned much about the gas, but chiefly by bitter experience. Two hours after one of the attacks an officer seeking his lield glasses descended into his shelter. The gas that had flooded the trenches and then floated away .still lurked in tho abri. And in a moment the officer was dead. The warning was instantly Hashed along the trenches from the North Sea to Switzerland, and now, after a gas raid the underground shelters aro attacked bv counter irritants and the poison driven from ambush. NOT ONE SULLEN FACE. I hare never seen better discipline

better spirit. There was not a single outside element to aid discipline, or to inspire morale. It had all to come from within. It had all to spring from the men themselves and from tho example set by their officers. The enemy fought against them, tho elements fought against them, the place itself was as cheerful as a crutch. The clay climbed from their feet to their thighs, was ground into their uniforms, clung to their hands and hair. The rain chilled them, the wind, cold, damp and harsh, stabbed through their great coats. Their outlook was upon graves, their resting places dark caverns, at which even a wolf would look with suspicion. And yet they were all smiling, eager, alert. In the whole command wo saw not ono sullen or wistful face. It is an old saying, " So tho colonel, so the regiment." But tho splendid spirit I saw on tho heights of the Meuse is truo not only of that colonel and of that regiment, but of the wholo 500 miles of trenches, and of all Franco.