Imperial Valley press., 1914-11-09
(By o Correspondent of the Inter
national News Service.)

Paris, Nov. 6.--The great glory of
the French highway is its trees
They soar from its border like the
pillars Of cathedral aisles, a definite
resemblance often completed by the
double row of columns on each side
and the tracery and vaulted arches Of
the green roof high over head. Where
now passed through the tortured and
desolate countryside, most of those
towering trunks were shattered by
shell-fre, and their pitiful fragments
were scattered far over the fields.
Lordly trees whose columns were two
feet thick had been struck squarely
in the middle and burst asunder, so
that the upper half had fallen by
its own weight.
/ was just a little to the southwest
of the town of Vitry-le- Francois,
around which ragged the most critical
and strenuous of the later phases IF
the battle of the Marne. Here the
final and the fercest German attempt
to break through the French lines was
made. For that struggle I cIalm the
title-now of general misapplication
of the greatest in the worlds his
tory" for it marked the accomplish
menV of what had begun to look hope
less-the arrest of the Teutonic ad-
vance and the saving of Europe's
fairest city from the barbarians. Had
the awful struggle round Vitry ended
in favor of the invaders, the French
army of Lorraine would have beer
isolated and compelled to surrender,
and the enemy would have established
new, short and alderman line of
communication, through Metz and
Stra "sburg to replace those long and
perilous Belgian lines which they are
now so desperately defending.
And the mute, terrific evidence Of
that Titanic struggle swarmed about
me. The roadside bitches were scoop
ed with the hasty hollows of honey
como shelters for PROSTATE rifemen.
OF the many things in those trenches
one does not care to write, but l
picked up several postcards. written
there, and couched in terms of ten
derest affection, postcards indescrib-
able, and never to be posted.
Total disaster overlook the village
of lIuineau, whose ghastly ruin |
found perched on the west bank of the
Marine just south of Vitry. 1t had,
perhaps, 100 to $50 houses, factory
and church. One cottage alone was
intact Of the rest, only black and
gaunc walls reared themselves from
chaos of bricks, furniture and
tharred beams. In the churehyard,
notice-board still protruded from the
mountain of consecrated debris with
the ironical legend: Rubbish must
rot lie dropped here"
4 few old people were slowly raking
ever the rubbish heaps in the houses
in sad and hopeless quest of something
dear TO them; and here l saw a dram
attic picture that IS burned forever on
my memory. AS I led my bicycle
through the obstacles that still lay
abou5 the road, an old, old woman saw
me approach, and with the shreds Of
intelligence left her by horror and
senility she recognized me as
stranger-some one not French.
Just behind her there still stood
the hlackened framework of a door
all that was left of her home. Still
responsive TO a primeval and eternal
instinct, she backed hastily into the
empty doorway, leaned one arm or
it and watched me pass with a dark
mistrust born of the Prussian terror.
Behind her, only a heap of rubbish
remained Of the sanctuary she had
long known and still claimed.
The few household effects that had
escaped the fire were being collected
IiNp q -Idils iluliiccu was IiO ilOI C
1t was a common enough sight to me
in the next few days-too common to
bear repetition-but not, perhaps, to
quite the same last limit of destruc-
tion.
You may imagine that I went
hungry hereabouts. At z that morn
ing had coffee and crusts-thera
was 70 butter. At one or two vii
lagos on the road they had laughed
ironically when l inquired for cafe
or restaurant. 1t was now l o'clock.
Several times ] had to dismount and
lead my bicycle round the edge of
great yawning holes in the road
caused by big shells-holes that
reached from side to side of it; holes
in which you could have buried L
horse and cart. The body of fine
horse still lay on the roadside with
terrific indications of the death agony.
It was difficult to get into Vitry-le-