The daily Gate City and constitution-Democrat. (Keokuk, Iowa) 1916-1922, 1917-04-16
VAST FIELD OF DESOLATION
Belgian nhabitan Starving
Wharo Of

from a stay or TWO days III tne
region lately evacuated by the Ger
mans between Montdidier and La
| Fere, the country that their own
newspapers boast OF having turned
into land of DEATH" The military
authorities allowed me to visit AL
! thexruined towns and villages within
a district about fifty miles long and
twenty wide. In that small fragment
of ravaged France l saw woe enough
to cover a kingdom with mourning.
The havoc begins soon after turn
ing north from Compiegne, and to
eyes familiar with the bombarded
ruins Of Flanders and the fire swept
towns of the Argonne and Lorraine
the sight presents no novelty, but
our first halt among the ruins OF an
annihilated village showed us that
the creelties of the German retreat
surpass those of the German lnva-
sion as greatly as the subtle fortunes
of Nero surpassed the cruelties OF
primitive warfare.
In the first place, it is evident that
the humble villages in the plain and
the isolated farmhouses in the open
fields were destroyed for the mere
joy of destroying They could have
been no menace to retreating armies.
Then there is the manner of their
destruction. have seen Ypres,
Gerbevillers, Sermaize, Badonviller-
all the towns from the North sea to
the Vosges whose determination we
shuddered over in the early days of
the war, but these ruins, senseless
though they were, were less dread
full than the merest wrecked farm
house in the country l have just Wis
tied.
The horror of these ruins of the
retreat are that many of the houses
have been blown UP and not burnt,
and that among all the fallen beams.
splintered tiles and twisted pipes one
searches in vain for any trace of
furniture or domestic utensils. There
is not a fragment of chair or
bed. not torn scrap of blanket or
sheet or clothing, and the people
will tell you why. 1t is because for
a month beforehand the Germans
were busy Systematically packing up
and carrying away every movable
article which these poor peasants
possessed.
l visited the towns of APPLY,
Chauny. Villequier, Cults. Roye, Las
signy, and many villages between.
Only in one house did we see the
fragment of a bed dangling through
the Quilted floor. Everywhere in the
fields is the same systematic ruin.
Near each murdered house are ruin
ed farming utensils, choked up wells
and orchards with PROSTATE fruit
trees Trees there was no time to
cut down have had the bark stripped
OFF or a deep ring hacked into the
trunks.
Again and again this scene of vain
destruction passed before us, and in
one of the doomed valleys where
were blackened farms. ruined orch
ards, flooded fields, darkened land
of death, we came on carefully
tended German graveyard, above
lettering IT am the resurrection and
the life" The presence everywhere
of these untouched German grave
yards is significant of the abyss in
ideals that exists between the two
races. At CHATEAU Goyncourt the
Germans broke open and defiled a
family vault. AT Nestle grave sto les
were torn up from the cemetery to
build platform for heavy gun.
In one village through which we
passed l saw that all the graves had
been uncovered and the broken slabs
flung in a heap among filth and
refuse, yet nowhere did | see a shlub
or stone displaced in any
of the gardenlike German cemeteries
along our road. The French rever
ence for the dead extends even to
the dead of such an enemy.
l expected to gather stories of the
retreat in every village, but there
was no one to tell them. All the
inha bitants were driven out before
their houses were destroyed. An
act of mercy at last? Well, ask the
people who had been gathered into
the surviving towns such as Nyon
and Ham. They are all women and
children, the sick, the infirm old
people. All others from Is to so
had been taken away. by the Ger
mans, nobody knows where, and not
only boys and men have gone, but
young girls, too.
Nine. Carrel, wife of the great
surgeon and herself at the head of
the famous hospital at Compiegne,
was the first woman to reach Noyon
after the retreat. Even now she
can hardly control herself when abe
describes what she heard from the
fugitives who were pouring in there.
At Guiscard she saw an old woman
who had attempted to rescue her
granddaughter, girl of IS, whom
German officer took off as his
orderly" The grandmother inter
vened and the officer broke her arm
with a sabre cut.
Another woman was knocked down
and her thigh was broken by blow
from an officer. One mother, whose
sons ares all at the front and who
had no news of them since the war
began, has just seen her two daugh-
tiers. Is and 16, carried off by the
Germans to an unknown destination.
Even this is not worse than what
we found in small village near
Guiscard. The women and children,
after fheir bows and men had been