DEVASTATION OF WAR

Waikato Times, Volume 88, Issue 13659, 13 December 1917, Page 2

DEVASTATION OF WAR

SIR E. CARSON'S VISIT TO THE FRONT.

NO REPARATION EQUAL TO GERMANY'S CRIME.

Sir Edward Carson, who lias been on a visit to the General Headquarters as the guest of Sir Douglas Haig, has returned to London. Sir Edward Carson went to the Messines Ridge and to Vimy Ridge, and he also witnessed the preliminary bombardment of the German positions in the Ypres sector before the infantry attack. During the visit he motored through the country where the Battle of the Somme was fought last year, and studied with deep interest the ground over which the Ulster Division made their historic attack on July 1, 1916. Sir Edward, in an interview, said he was specially struck bv two things: The first is the marvellously perfect and scientific character of the organisation created by our high command. Nothing but visual evidence of that marhine and its working can give one an approximate idea of it. The other impression is that of the extent of the territory covered by a ruthless hive of industry devoted to war. The ceaseless movement in every direction by countless machines and vehicles of every conceivable description, the immense numbers of men busy at all sorts of ocupations, as in a great industrial centre which densely covers mile after mile at long distances from the actual fighting, give a first impresion of an almost chaotic variety of activity, until one remembers that behind it all is a directing mind. One thus sees a picture of our national effort converted into tangible results, and one grasps how literally true it is that the man at home in the workshop, the shipyard, and the mine is the comrade and fellow-worker of the soldier in the trench. Sir Edward went on to speak of the terrible devastation wrought in France and Belgium, to which no description can do justice. Even when one stands on the ground itself among thistles stretching in every direction, and tries to thread one's way between holes the smallest of which would hold a taxicab, and the largest a church, it is difficult to believe that what looks like a vas't expanse of rough moor or fen. covered with every conceivable kind of litter and filth, and without a sign of human habitation or human care was (until the coming of the Hun), a rieli plateau of wheat and rye. of beet and potatoes, of hops and apples and plums, with bright little clusters of gardened cottages, of which it is now difficult even to find a trace. My one regret is that this abominable desolation cannot be witnessed by every Englishman. This wilderness cannot, at all events for some generations to come, be made to blossom again like the rose. It will probably be afforested, if it can be sufficiently levelled even for such use. What is to become of its former inhabitants no one knows. The men have been killed; the women who survived have been deported. In other cases they are refugees to other parts of France, where they have managed to find some sort of subsistence and where they will probablv remain permanently. Germany has suffered none of this terrible devastation. No "reparation" can ever make good what Germany's crime against humanity has destroyed, but no oik' can witness the work of the Hun without vowing that the repartion shall he as complete as France and her Allies can exact from the despoiler.