A TRIP TO VERDUN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11731, 22 June 1916, Page 4

A TRIP TO VERDUN.

Tho citadel of Verdun, the bulwark of the eastern frontier in ancient days, rises out of the meadows of tno 3-euse with something of tho abruptness of the skyscraper, and still preserves aspect which led the writers ot oj.u wars to describe all forts as . n inls> " 'writes F. «. bmiond* m the u New York Tribune." It W na built for Louis XIV. by Vauban. He took a solid rock and' blasted out redoubts anc battlement*. The generations that followed him dug into the living rock and created within it a whole city of catacombs, a vast labyrinth of passages and chambers and halls; even an elevator un dded bv the latest engineers, so hat one can go from floor to floor, from tho level of tiie meadow to the level of the summit of the rock, possibly 100 ft S C tho ivar 'began, the world tow^corne to know of the underground life m Verdun to think of the city as defend- • , tnq c .a or citadel that is defensible' either by walls or by forts Bu v the truth is far different; even the old Jitadil is but a deserted cave; its massive walls of natural rock r^ I£t J* G shells as they would repulse an avalanche- but tiie guns that were once on £tappets are- gone, the garrison is r ie ' rz hSr'The S o "v fltac" S wJr7b,eaa is « where wounded men ar ?,. occ , i t w i-ipro live the soldiers andoffib™. 'Sk'oMfmpoiu.il but miromantfc ss oS ofthi ,ia „ rf v«d.m of the BOW'. the welcome obscurity of this Jhk was perhaps the most com ortable personal iKddoft of the daj. The mere shadow of the rock gave a sense of security ; to penetrate it was to pass to sifetv MY HOST IN VERDUN. Some moments of wandering by corridors and stairways into the very heart of the rock brought us to the quarters of our host, General Dubois; to his kind attention I war. to owe all my good fortune in seeing his dying city; to him, at tho end. I was to owe the ultimate evidence of courtesy, which I shall never forget. Unlike Petain or Joffre. General Du-

A SHELL-RIDDLED CITY.

"BUT WILLIAM WILL NOT COM."

again in the squares. Jt warlike the sense you have when you see an eld peasant ploughing among the? crossmarked graves of a hard fought battle corner—the sense of a beginning as well as of death and destruction. But at Verdun it was utterly difOf life, or people, of activity beginning again or surviving there was nothing. Some time in the recent past all the little people who lived in tliese houses had put upon waggons what could bo quickly moved and had slipped out of their home, that was already under_sentence of death. They were gone into the distance, and they had left behind them 110 stragglers. The city was empty save for a few soldieia who passed rapidly along the streets, as one marches in a heavy snowstorm. ■yAGARIES OF SHELL-FIRE. Yet Verdun was not wholly dead. Shell-fire is the most inexplicable ol all things that carrj' destruction. As you passed down one street the mark of destruction varied with each house. Hero the blast had come and cut the building squarely; it had carried with it into ruin behind in the courtyard all that the house contained, but against tlhe wall tho telephone rested undisturbed ; pictures.—possibly even a look-ing-glass hung as the inhabitants had left it, hung as perhaps it had hung when the last woman had taken her ultimate hurried glance at her hat before she departed into the outer darkness. /But the next house had lost only the front walls; it stood before ycu as'if it had been opened for your inspection by the removal of the facade. Chairs, beds—all the domestic economy of the house—sagged visibly outward towards the street, or stood still firm, but open f,a the four winds. It was as if the» scene were prepared for a stage and sat before the footlights looking into the interior. Again, the next house and that beyond were utterly gone—side walls, front walls, every tiling swallowed up and vanished—the iron work twisted into heaps, tho stone work crumbled to dust; the whole mass ul ruin still smoked, for it wasa shell of yesterday that had done this work._ Down on the Riviera, where the mistral blows—all the pine trees lean away from tho invariable track of this storm wind—you have the sense, even in the summer months, of a whole countryside bent by the gales. In the same fashion you felt in Verdun, felt rather than saw, - a whole town not } ent > '? crumpled, crushed—and tho line of fall was always apparent; you could toll tho direction from which storm of shells had come, you could almost feel that the storm was but. suspended. not over, that at any moment it mighit begin again. Yet even in the midst of destruction there were enclaves of unshaken structures. On the Rue jVlazel, Main Street," the ohief clothing store rose immune amid ashes on all sides. Its huge plate-glas<3 ■ window was not even cracked ; and behind the window a litt.e mannikin, one of the familiar images that wear clothes to tempt the purchaser, stood erect. A French soldier had crept in and raised' the stiff arm of the mannikin to the salute, pushed hack the hat to a rakish angle. The mauuikin seemed alive, and more than alive, the embodiment of the spirit or the place. Facing northward towards tho German guns, it seemed to respond to ihcm with a morituri salutamus. j Tho last civilian in Verdun, the soldiers called him, but his manner was rather that of the poilu > j CROWN PRINCE DID'NOT COME. We entered our cfirs again and went to another quarter of the city. Everywhere were ashes and' ruin, but everywhere the sense of a destruction was progressive, not complete: it stni marched. It was as Arras had been, they told me, before the last wall had tumbled and the Artois capital had hpcome nothing but a memory. We climbed the slope towards the cathedral and stopped in a little square still unseat hod. the Place d'Armes. the most historic acre of the town. After a moment I realised what my friends were telling me. It was in this square that the Crown Prince was to receive the surrender of the town. Alone; the road we had climbed he ,was to lead his victorious army through the town and out the Port de France beyond. In this square the Kaiser was to stand and_ re- | view the army, to greet ms victorious son. The scene as it had been arranged' was almost rehearsed for you in the gestures of the French officers. "But William has not co-me," they said. " and he will not come now." This last was not spoken as a baost, but as n faith, a conviction. Still climbing, we came to the cathedral. It is seated on the very top pinnacle of the rock of Verdun, suggesting che French cities of Provence. Its two towers, severe and lacking ornamentation, are tho landmarks of the countryside for miles around. When I came back to America I read the story of an American correspondent whom the Germans had brought down fro-ni Berlin to s«e tho destruction of They had brousht him to the edge of the lulls aßd then"thrown some incendiary shells into the town, the verv shells that killed the men whose bodies I had seen. The black • smoke and flame.; rushed up around these towers, and then toe Germans brought the correspondent over the hills and showed him the destruction of Verdlm He described it vividly. and concluded that the condition of the town must bo desperate. TEUTONIC STAGE MANAGEMENT. They are a wonderful people, these Germans, in their stage management, Oi course this was piec;sely the dung that they desired that he shouid feel. lho\ had sent their shells at the right moment, the whole performance had gone off like clockwork. Those poor black©nod masses of humanity in the house below were the cost that was represented in the performance. And since there is much left to burn in Verdun, tho Germans may repeat this thinn whenever they desire. But somewhere three _or four miles from here, and between Yerduu and uio Germans, are many thousands of Frenchmen, with guars and cannon, ana hearts of even metal. They cannot even know that Verdun is beinc shelled or is burning, and if it burns to ultimate ashes it will not affect them o> their lines. This is the fallacy of all the talk of the destruction of Verdun city aud the desperate condition of its defenders. The army Mr Verdun for tho hills when tho war began; tho people left when the present drive began in February. Even the dogs and cats, which were seen by correspondents in earlier visits, have been rescued ant' sent away. Verdun is dead, it is almost as dead as or?, Arras and Ypres: but neither of these towns after a year and a half of bombardment has fallen. Tho correspondent who was taken up on a hill by the Germans to see Verdun burn, after it had been carefully set nre by shell tire, was discovered by a.blaze by shell fire, was discovered by away taking with him an impression of a doomed city. This picture was duly transmitted to America. But two day., later, wh6u I visited the city, there was no evidence of desperation, because there was no one left to be do-perato. Doubtless on occasion we shall, have many more descriptions meant to impress Americans or encourage Germans. The material for .such fires is not exhausted. Tho cathedral on the top of tho hill is hardly shell-marked at all, and it will make a famous display \vh« i it Ls fired as was R hoi ins, as were tho churches of Champagne and .\rtcis

But there is something novel in the thought of a city burned, not to make a Roman or even German holiday., but burned to make the world believe that the Battle of Verdun hn/4 bean a Go: - - uiiu: victory.