The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1916-08-30

pitiful figures of the few peasants to
be seen. was to see this wonderfully
beautiful and rich country with great
stretches of ripe grain all but un-
touched by the reaper. In many
places already beginning to fall, and
with only now and then a few peas
ants attacking big field of it with a
scythe! Just think of it. Picture
central or western Kansas in the
bloom of a great harvest. with but a
few old grandparents and grandchil-
dren to bring in the harvest; wives
and daughters working in the hot sun;
few or no horses, and no modern ma
chinery to speak of. 1 tell you, it got
my goat.
Father and Daughter Reap.
For example, repassed in the after
noon a man and his daughter who a
half hour before had given me some
directions at Etrepilly. They were
just attacking a field of dead ripe
wheat that stood at the mans shout
ders, and he was a man of more than
average peasants height. 1 judge
that his field would go sixty bushels
to the acre-fine big stalks, with long
heads filled with big fat kernels of
wheat-a crop such as few Kansas
farmers ever have. stopped and
talked with them as well as 1 could
in my broken French lingo, exchang-
ing such intelligence as where 1 was
from and going, how 1 liked Paris, and
so on. 1 told them that we principally
raised wheat in Kansas but that 1 had
never seen a crop there like his. That
pleased them.
1 wanted to ask If the French gov
eminent wasn't trying to furnish the
peasants with binders or mowers in
the absence of plenty of labor, but I
didn't have the heart. I saw plain as
daylight that those two, the man with
IL HI
could never save that fine crop; that
they were attacking a forest with a
pen knife. If 1 were sent out with q
hand sickle to save a field of wheat
like that, I'd cut my throat rather
than try, but here these two people
were, going at it patiently and cheer
fully, but with a tragic sort of per-
sistence that just made me want to
pull off my coat and go help them.
And it was so the whole day. I saw
the traces of but one mower. and late
in the afternoon I passed a group of
a binder, the first one I have seen in
Save 1 Per Cent of Crop.
Just a mile back 1 had passed, an
hour before, the ruins of machine
shed which the Germans burned two
years ago, including of course all the
farm machinery of the neighborhood
-rakes, mowers, binders, and go on.
In short, suppose 1 saw some of the
finest and largest crops per acre that
1 ever will, but not enough labor or
machinery in sight to save 1 per cent
of it, And in spite of attempts by the
government to send young soldiers and
soldiers on relief back to harvest, the
situation is much the same in all of
France now that the battles of the
Somme and Verdun are going their
worst.
All along the route I met old men
and some women in the fields, and
talked with them. but generally speak
ing, even in the villages, there was
very little life. My first sight of the
real battle field was just south of
Chambry. 1t was grave number one
Of the battle, fenced in with barbed
wire, decorated with flowers and 50
on. and carrying at the head the Gus
tumary cross with a faded white flag
gently waving in the breeze. AS 1
progressed 1 saw everywhere thru
the wheat and oat fields innumerable
such flags, the white for French, the
black for Germans. 1t was a doubly
sad sight, l tell you, to see all these
graves there among crop dead ripe
and going to waste for want of the
men buried whereabouts. At this
point / also found a handsome monu-
ment recently erected in memory OF
the soldiers fallen in this battle.
Graveyard, Fort.
At Chambry. a little further on
the principal point of interest was
graveyard enclosed by high stone
wall about a foot and half thick.
This had been the center of hot
fight, the wall in places being blown
out by cannon shots. Moreover, the
wall all around was pierced at the
height of a mans shoulders by holes
thru which the French fired on the
Germans. Then near Barcy found
triangular plot of ground OF about
half acre fenced off and surrounded
by faded flags-evid emily a wholesale
burying ground mute testimonial to
the battle that had ragged in the ad-
joining fields.
At Barcy I saw church. 1t had
been struck by shell. and cesecrated.
and finally burned by the Germans,
along with a number of houses in the
town. The great church bell, some
five feet in diameter at the base, was
still lying in the threshold of the
church just as it had fallen from the
porting rafters burned. OF course the
interior of the church was shambles.
Remains of Trenches.
There was nothing much at Mar
cilly, but going east toward Etrepilly,
1 found some reconstructed German
trenches opening right onto the road
from a small embankment. These
were all OVerSrOWn With grass, 50 lhdl
several times l all but fell into great
eight foot burrows that jutted this
way and that most Unexpectedly.
However. these trenches were some
what weathered, and, moreover, are
not at all comparable to trenches at
the present time, since the Germans
occupied this territory such a short
time that they threw up only most
hasty constructions which they were
soon forced to abandon. AS a matter
of fact one can see on this particular
battle field only the ruins of the real
trenches.
At Etrepilly l found another monu-
ment, innumerable graves, and the
machinery shed which the Germa ms
burned. Here l stood before an open
stretch of pasture land without even