The Bridgeport evening farmer. [volume] (Bridgeport, Conn.) 1866-1917, 1917-07-06

everything, without peer. we VIII
sweep aside all laws."-(Lasson, Ger
man professor.
L these hours, passing through
places so devastated that till recently
the French imagination could not
even conceive, how can one say that
anything remains of our beautiful
provinces from which the master has
just relaxed his hold!
How they must have worked, those
gorillas, toiling with an unwearying
and amazing genius for evil, to have
succeeded SO quickly in creating such
havoc, that, as you pass further on,
spreads out everywhere. This is
great section of our country that has
ceased to exist. How one longs to es-
cape from this nightmare! Every
minute, at every turn of the road you
hope and say to yourself: This must
be the end But it is not the end.
Ruins succeed ruins. Cities, bridges
over rivers, villages and humble, iso-
lated farms. all are destroyed, torn
| down or smashed to pieces. The
! gorillas have found time to destroy
everything.
! To digress a little, it will be sufn-
cient to fathom the soul of Germany
to glance at their history. Before
this war, that has revealed SO much
that cannot be denied, many good
| people among us had heard much Of
German Industries those hundreds
of establishments whose worthless
trash has for some years flooded the
| world. But here is an industry even
1 more German, more thoroughly ma
| tional espionage, plumber. rape and
slaughter Read their authors, their
great 90 men,. On each page there
is an apology for this industry. Look
| into their history since the beginning
of our era; it is especially by this
industry that they have lived.
Some months before the actual in
! yasion, so carefully and SO feldishly
| prepared, at the instigation of the
Kaiser, undertook to plead extenuat-
| ing circumstances in advance for the
| premeditated crimes Of his master.
ct is a question of humanity" he
dared to write, to make war atrocious
that it may end more quickly" And
i it is said that there are people even
i among us who consider this seriously
1 and do this hireling the honor Of dis
4 cussing it!
4 Shortly after this, the Monster If
/ Berlin, believing the hour propitious.
| opened the cages of his menagerie and
l LA0TC went Oul OFCI HOpiC oClS1uIIl, as
1 on our dear France, the most fero-
cious beasts ever known. Meanwhile
-stupor-the Neutrals did not stir.
and--more deadly stupor-they were
1 even found, because of hes and
money, they were even found to be
Germanophiles!
/ But today, following the course of
their brilliant retreat, the horror
reaches its height. Now is. the real
Il unmasking of Germany, daring at
last to bare to the world the face OF
4, wild animal. Since Atilla, Europe
has not imagined such morals: The
civil population carried away into
slavery, the destruction, the robbery
the slaughter, and even the violation
Of the graves of our soldiers, officially
and thoroughly carried on by order OF
the chiefs
And besides. though they may deny
1t, have they not themselves described
the details in their own papers, de.
lighted to praise the care that theil
troops had taken, by orders, to leave
behind them only a desert when evac'
uating our already martyred cities;
And they have had the naiveness tt
add also that certain of their sol
diers-evident1y humble and suscepti
II
work and their officers were obliged
to make strong speeches to forc'
them! (Sic.)
Must our civilization raise it
temples on mountains Of corpses, OF
oceans of tears, on the groans Of tn,
dying ?-Y es!"-Field Marshal vol
Haeseler.)
Now. although the spring time, in
sensible or ironicle, has come agail
with her green garments, with tn
songs of birds, nothing is gay in thes
fresh ruins which so to speak still
4 bleed. O the contrary, the horror o
the German acts is more revolving. An,
I believe that this country from whicl
they have just driven the Barbarians
but where the inhabitants have no
yet returned and where the distan
roar of the cannon migles only wit,
: the distracted trills of the nightingale
. is more desolate than in winter
A May sky, calm and sweet, of tn
color of a turtle dove, has sprea
above me without a cloud through m
long journey today. It made NOR
brilliant the green of the new leave
and the endless carpet of grass. 1t !
too thick, this grass, covering rub
bish and sinister piles It's growth !
more 1uxuriant than would be cause
by the soil of these plains which ar
deeply ploughed in ridges an
trenches and sown all around wit
bullets and great cannon balls, wit
here and there part Of shell c
q marmite.
From time to time we come upo
villages which have lost all semblanc
of form, the houses and the churc
have fallen one on top of the othe
like g. house Of cards against wTic
4 the wind has blown. In the wood
also, only the skeletons of trees are I
n be seen, twisted and broken, wher
some branches, left by chance, hay
tried to leaf out and put themselve
ID in holiday costume as in calm spring
Of yore. The nearer one gets to tn
+ region that the Barbarians still hol
the greater the horror and the loude
] the cannon, yet the birds still sing.
One of the sstrangest things on TIL
French plain now turned into desel
are the enormous webs of barbed wir
: which wind around everything. Thes
. wires that cannot be untangled, GOV
ering at least ten metres, bristle wit
points like the pile on velvet The
cross each other, interwinding, fc
i. kilometres, till lost to sight amlids
the thick grass, and show the grea
labor of legions Of human spiders.
TO remove all this. to fill I'D thes
- L. l.,