Evening star., 1916-04-30

| tasks that war has set for them. This
is the France behind the front, and.
aside from the ruined villages and
graves. the France that stretches from
the Pyrenees to the Marne. a France
from which youth and manhood are
gone, in which age and childhood re-
we were passing how much Of the
youth and manhood of France and
Germany was buried in the graves the
crosses demonstrated at every kilome-
ter.
At the Back of the Front.
But a hundred miles east of Paris
there begins a new world. The graves,
the shell-cursed villages. remain, but
this is no longer the France of the
Marine fighting and of the war of two
years ago. At Vitry-le- Francois you
pass almost without warning into the
region which is the back of the front
today, the base of all the line of fire
from Rheims to the Meuse. and sud
denly along the road appear the can
vas guideposts which bear the terse
warning "Verdun." You pass suddenly
from ancient to cotemporary history,
from the killing of other years to the
killing that is of today-the killing
and the wounding-and along the hills
where there are still graves there, gin
to appear Red Cross tents and signs.
latest harvest.
And now every village is a garrison
town. For hundred miles there have
been only women and old men. but now
streets; they crowd the doorways of
the houses. The fields are filled with
tents with horses. with all the imped-
imenta of an army. The whole coun-
tryside is place of arms. Every
branch of French service is about you
the brown and the white-the men who
Yesterday or last week were in the
first line. who rest and will return to-
morrow or next day to fight again..
The Business of War.
Unmistakably, too. you feel that this
is the business of war; you are in a fac
tory. a machine shop; if the product is
death and destruction, it is no less a
matter of machinery. not of romance,
of glamour. The back of the front is
place of work and of rest for more
work. but of parade of the brilliant, Of
the fascinating there is just nothing.
Men with bright but plainly weary
faces. not young men, but men Of thirty
and above. hard bitten by their expert
ence. patiently fit. fed, but somehow re-
lated to the ruins and the destruction
around them. they are all about you,
and wherever now you see a grave you
viii discover a knot of men standing
before it. talking soberly. Wherever
you see the vestiges of an old trench, a
hill that was fought for at this time
twenty months ago, you will see new
practice trenches and probably the re-
cruits, the "class of 1917" the boys that
are waiting for the call. listening to an
oficer explaining to them what has
good judgment revealed by the event,
For France is training the youth that
remains to her on the still recent bat
tlef1elds and in the presence of those
who died to keep the ground.
The Life Line at verdun.
Just as the darkness came we passed
st. Dizier and entered at last upon the
road to Verdun, the one road that is the
life line of the city. For to understand
the real problem of the defense of Ver-
dun you must realize that there is lack
ing to the city any railroad. In Septem-
ber. 1914. the Germans took ST. Mihiel
and cut the railway coming north along
the Meuse. On their retreat from the
Marine the soldiers of the crown prince
matted at Montfaucon and varennes,
and their cannon have commanded the
Paris-verdun-Metz railroad ever since.
save for crazy narrow-gauRe line.
wandering along the hill slopes, climb
ing by impossible grades, Verdun Ia
=" communication.
1t was this that made the defense ~
the town next to impossible Partially
to remedy the defect the French had
reconstructed a local highway running
from st. Dizier by Bar r-le-Duc to Yer
dun beyond the reach Of German arti1-
iery: Today an army of a quarter of a
million of men, the enormous parks of
heavy artillery and field gune-eyery-
thing is supplied by this one road and
by motor transport.
Miles Of Motor Trucks.
Coming north from st. Dizier we en-
tered this vast procession. Mile after
mile the caravan stretched on, fifty
miles with hardly a break of hum
dfed feet between trucks. Paris buses.
turned into vehicles to bear fresh meat.
new motor trucks built to carry thirtv
fve men and travelling in companies.
regiments, brigadier: wagons from the
hood of which soldiers, bound to re-
place the killed and wounded of yes
terday. looked down upon you, calmly
but unsmilingly- From ST. Dizier to
Nerdun the impression was of that of
the machinery by which logs are car
ried to the saw in a mill. You felt un-
consciously, yet unmista kabIy. that Won
were looking, not upon automobiles,
not upon separate trucks. but upon
some vast and intricate system of belts
and benches that were steadily, swift
ly. surely carrying all this vast ma
terial. carrying men and munitions and
supplies, everything human and inapi-
mate, to that vast grinding mill which
was beyond the hills, the rushing
machine which worked with equal re-
morselessness upon men and upon
things.
Now and again, too. over. the hills
came the Red Cross ambulances; they
passed you returning from the front
and bringing within their carefully
closed walls the finished product, the
fruits of the days grinding, or a frac-
ton thereof And about the whole
thing there was a sense of the techni-,
that suggested an automatic, a ma
chine driven. movement; it was as IL
an unseen system of belts and engines
and levers guided. moved, propelled
this long procession upward and ever
toward the mysterious front where the
knives or the axes or the grinding
stones did their work.
Night Near the Front.
Night came down upon US along the
road and brought a new impress
Mile on mile over the hills and round
the curves. disappearing In the woous,
reappearing on the distant SUBMITS of
the hills. each showing q rear light
that wagged crafty on the horizon,
this huge caravan plowed onward. while
in the villages and on the hillsides
campfires flashed up and the faces or
figures of the soldiers could be seen
now clearly and now dimly But all
else was subordinated to the line of
moving transports. Somewhere far of
AT the end of the procession there waa