New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-07-30

.he saddest sections of the world. II Is the
region Of French villages wilfully destroyed
by the Germans. There are more than two
hundred of them, towns and villages, where
the Germans pllaged, burned and murdered
without excuse, but Systematically and under
orders. | find that this cold cruelty has left
a memory in the minds Of the peasants.
have talked with many Of them They are
not hystercal nor even bitter But their
homes have been burned father or sister
shot before their eyes. They do not care TO
be conquered by people who commit atroci-
ties The Germans must 60 home. They are
not wanted In France The French are ready
10 die, man by man, TO the last reserve,
rather than be made a part Of the German
Empire. receive an impression Of some
thing implacable from these common people,
Who are the heart and strength of France.
Their eyes have seen terrible things. They
do not care to live in world where such
things are done, for life is not worth having
l. such things succeed.
We stood inside cave, on the TOP of hill
outside Amance, and looked out through a
peephole on German Lorraine. The young
officer who was conducting us, baron
looked over to his own home at Seth par
Define, in German hands. When he wrote
his address for us he wrote his village Seth
par DelMe, France" "That is the first time
have ever written it as being in France" he
said "for it is just across the border All
my life have had to write Germany after
IL. But when you come next time it will be
IN France. ask you to come and visit me.
L.. 40 nd 10 ptttt tpov
in order, for the first year or two after the
war will be busy and difficult. But come
and we will go tramping through that wood
where thousands Of men lie dead. That Is
the wood where have hunted very often"
A Panorama of War.
That was the first sweeping panorama Of
the war which have seen. We could see
the Cathedral at Metz, a faint smudge in the
afternoon light. And for thirty miles of the
frontier we were seeing France and Germany.
II was a INSTALLATION of one of the great
is sues of the war. Is that line drawn by
Bismarck across French soil to be perpetu-
ated, or will France regain her own? Up to
that half hour on the hill top | had been
living the war intensely at some one little
point on the battle line in fiat country with
never moment Wncn l COulu uTdN Oub anu
re alize the vastness of the struggle and the
meaning of it. But here, underneath us,
were the kingdoms of the earth being wrest-
led for as we looked, "and l. my comrade, am
over il all"
And the next two days we held the same
sense of seeing the war largely, for we went
by swift motors through Meurthc-et- Moselle,
the Meuse and the Marine, in the track of
the peace which the Germans found and the
wilderness of ashes and rubble which they
left. Those villages, burned house by house,
ere like the ruins of very ancient civiliza-
ton. % = we were stepping among the bones
of a dead age. Only the green fields that
flowed up to the wrecked cottages and the
handful Of sober-faced peasants, survivors
# the arson and the slaughter, like raft
Dad of passengers from a foundered ship
only these were living in that belt of death
that cuts across the face of France like the
scar from a whip on a prisoners cheek.
Life will return TO those districts Already
there is "Cafe des Ruines," a rough
hosiery made from logs o. wood, in Ger
beviller, where the Bavarians burned AIS
touses. As they came southwark through
.he village they destroyed every house on
every street In a day they wiped out seven
centuries of humble village history. They
burned and killed till they reached the house
where Sister Julie lived, and where she was
caring for wounded soldiers in her little hos
pital.
Sister Julie.
There they stopped for she stopped them.
And the twenty houses beyond her hospital
still stand because that night Of August "a
there was great woman in that little viii
lage. Outside of half dozen generals she
is perhaps the most famous character whom
the war has revealed. She is one of the
greatest personages whom France has pro-
duced even France in her long history We
talked with this peasant sister for an hour
and half. The last days of Gerbeyiller live
in her story Later, this summer, ! am going
70 send over her account word for word as
she gives it, Her recital is touched with
humor in spite of the horror that lay heaped
around her She raises the poignard of the
German colonel; you see it held over her
head ready to strike. BY pantomime she
creates the old paralytc man. the hobblng
women, the man who went lou"
| want the people at home TO understand
This war So am telling of it in terms that
are homely. | have asked the authorities to
let we wander through the villages and talk
with the inhabitants. What a village suffers,
what a storekeeper suffers will mean some
thing to my friends in Iowa and Connecticut.
Talk OF artillery duels with big guns and
bayonet charges through barbed wire falls
strangely on peaceful ears. But what a
druggists wife has seen, what a school
teacher tells will come home 10 Americans in
Eliot Me, and down the Mississippi Valley.
What one cares very much to reach is the
solid silent public opinion of the smaller
cities, the towns and villages. The local
storekeeper. the village doctor, the farmer,
these are the men who make the real Amer
ica-the America which responds slowly but
irresistibly 10 a sound presentation of facts.
The alert newspaper editor, the hustlng real
estate man, the booster for better planned
town-these citizens shape our public opin-
ION. If once our loyal Middle Westerners
know the wrong that has been done people
Just like themselves they will resent it as
each Of Us resents il who has seen il.
Fearfulness Planned In Advance.
This is no dim. distant thing. This is a piece
Of cold planned injustice by murder and fire