Connecticut western news., 1915-12-23
KIPLING SEES
 STONE AGE IN
Line of Trenches Erected by Man Precisely as In Pre-
 historic Times.

yard kiplng under the general title of "France at War on the From tier of Civilization" describing the impressions of visit to the fight
 ing line in France.
 By RUDYARD KlPLING. [Copyright, 1915, by the Sun Printing and
 Publishing association.1
 ""HIS is the end of the line," said
 the staff officer, the kindesr
 and most patient of chaperons.
 It buttressed itself on a for tress among the hills. Beyond that the silence was more awful than the mixed noise of the business to the westward. -n mileage on the map the line must be between 400 and 500 miles. In ac- tual trench work it is many times that distance. It is too much to see at full length. The mind does not readily break away from the obsession Of it's entirety nor grip it's detail. One wis ualizes the thing afterward as q white hot gash worming all across France between intolerable sounds and lights under ceaseless blasts of whirled dirt. Nor is it any relief to lose oneself among Wildernesses of piling, stOninG. timbering, concreting, wire work or in calculable quantities of soil thrown up raw to the light and cloaked by the achanging seasons as the unburied dead are cloaked.
 Yet there are no words to give the essential simplicity of it. It is ram- part put up by man against the beast, precisely as in the stone age. If 1t goes, all that keeps us from the beast goes with it. One sees this at the front as clearly as one sees the French vil- lages behind the German lines. Some times the people steal away from them and bring word of what they endure. Where rife and bayonet serve, men use those tools along the front; where the knife gives better results, they go in behind the hand grenades with the naked twelve inch knife.
 New Methods In Use.
 Each race is supposed to fight in its own way, but this war has passed be- yond all known ways. They say that the Belgians in the north settle ac- counts with certain dry passion - which has varied very little since their agony began. Some sections of the English line have produced a soft voiced. rather reserved type which does its work with it's mouth shut. The French carry an edge to their fighting. a precision and dreadful knowledge coupled with an insensibility to shock unlike anything one has imagined of mankind.
 To be sure, there has never been a like provocation, for never since the Aesir went about to bind the Ferris wolf has all the world united to bind the beast.
 The last saw of the front was Alan Breck speeding back to his gun posi- tions among the mountains, and l won dered what delight of what household the lad must have been in the old days. Then we had to work our way, department by department, against the tides of men behind the line. Supports and their supports, reserves and reserves of reserves as well as masses in training-they flooded towns and villages. When we tried short cuts we found them in every bylane. Have you seen mounted men reading their home letters with reins thrown on their horses necks. moving in absorbed silence through a street which almost said "Hushr' to it's dogs, or met in a forest procession of perfectly new big guns, apparently taking themselves from the foundry to the front?
 French Keep Quiet.
 In spite of their love of drama there Is not much window dressing in the French character. The boche,, who is the priest of the higher counter jun pery, would have had half the neutral press out in cars to advertise these vast spectacles of men and material. But the same instinct as makes their rich farmers keep to their smocks makes the French keep quiet.
 ''This is our affair."" they argue. "Everybody concerned in it is taking part in it like the review you saw the other day. There are no spectators. But it might be of advantage if the world knew"
 Mine was a foolish remark.
 '"There is only one world today, the world of the allies. Each of them knows what the others are doing, and the rest doesn't matter. This is a curi- ous but delightful fact to realize first hand and think what it will be later when we shall all circulate among each other, open our hearts and talk it over in a brotherhood more intimate than ties of blood"
 I lay that night at a little French town and was kept awake by a man somewhere in the hot, still darkness bowling aloud from the pain of his wounds. was glad he was alone, for when one man gives way others some times follow. Yet single note of mis- cry is worse than the baying and gulp. ing of a whole ward. I wished a dele gation of strikers could have heard it.
 Dreadful to Contemplate.
 That civilian should be in the war zone at all is a fair guarantee of his good faith. It is when he is outside the