The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-04-30
VERDUN A CITY
 OF PATHOS AND
 SCREENING RUIN
Rain Drops Through the Shell Torn Cathedral Roof
 and Fallen Paintings Rot.

Verdun, France, April 28-The visitor to Verdun must approach 1t stealthily, clad in steel helmet and carrying carefully his gasmask in it's waterproof bag. Thus fortified and with his eye watchful for any com mencement of activity by the distant German batteries, he may walk and climb among the ruins or follow the debris -chattered bank of the lovely Mouse. broad, green, calm, and indif- ferent to solitude such as it has not known for thousand years.
 The rain drips through the she'll torn roof of the Cathedral, pulping the choir-scores and the missals tossed with the fallen masonry about the floors, making mud of the altar's dust, rotting the canvas of the fallen pictures, rendering all thing squalid.
 Close by is the theatre, with it's brocaded galleries brimming over with wreckage, Haunting rags, and reveal ing through the uncurtained stage all the shabby mysteries of it's mechan- ism, all in wild confusion.
 Visitors are rare in Verdun, but the town holds out to them emphatically the freedom of the city, every door and window open and no human eye to watch. Along the river bank are the little restaurants and cafes, the floors strewn with cups and saucers, glasses ranged on the counters, the open ledgers on the cashiers desks in- viting the inspection of the curious. It has been many months since the customers sat around these upturned J watched the green Mouse slide below the bridges on sunny afternoons.
 The little humble shops along the side streets are more pathetic than the big clubhouse or the pitted warehouses with their shattered windows. The shops are wide open, with their scales still on counter, their knives and sugar scoops all ready for business. The tailor shops displayed pictures of the modes for summer 1914, hopelessly out of date.
 verdun is only little town, just struggling out of village hood into dig nity as an incorporated city. Ten or twelve thousand was it's peace-time It loks no different than 3 peaceful American city, for the citadel is the least conspicuous of Verdun's features and the town de- ceitfully seems indefensive, open to assault and outrage like seaside watering place.
 From one of the buildings on the hill, above the narrow winding streets of the upper town one may look down on the worst -shelled central parts. all pounded into shapelessness, the finest street obliterated, workshop, ware house and tenement all reduced to ,rumbled brick and mortar of yellow sh hue. Outside this devastated area, he rest of Verdun stands with a pecious look of being hale and aabitale, only with the jagged out ines of a broken gable showing here md there.
 Tramcars used to run down the Avenue de la Care from the railway station; cabs piled for hire; folk ounged in the afternoon on the de Ia Digue. No life is in Lny of these places now save the rat hat squeaks and burrows in the ruins when another shell comes with it's for verdun is still the ob- ect of the Germans' daily hate.
 There is nobody above the surface ,f the ground in Verdun, but the sub- erranean fortresses beneath the Cita- Tel, deep down under mountain rock, 1 Ire still animate with men, soldiers who are Keeping up the defensive that l months of German activity failed to l ,reak.