Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1917-05-19

PARIS April 10.
Tn 4 headquarters automobile with n staff
officer I have made the third trip in
eighteen days to evacuated and rcconqucrcd
devastated regions visiting that which had
been five prosperous towns and twenty
contented villages Of the Aisnc, Disc and
Somme country What I saw in n three
days Journey Of $50 kllomcters from Paris
to Paris hcRgars description. \ very lord
Of languages could not phrase into sentences
and paragraphs the deliberate, horrible de-
structlon pcrpctratcd by the Germans. one
must see to grasp It's frightful reality. as
one must talk with the aged the only in.
habitants not driven like cattle to slavery,
to understand something Of the inhumanty
and brutality to which these poor people
have been subjected. II ia more than in
human and brutal It's iucomprchensibIe.
It's beyond adjcctivcs Nothing like it ever
before occurred in the worlds history.
If you will imagine the district from
Broad street 20 the Schuyl,l River and
from Wharton 10 Poplar street in Philadel-
phia a razcd mass Of crumbling brick and
stone with nothing To ohstruct the vista
over the entire section save here and there
a hit Of jagged wall five or six feet high,
you will have a picture Of not one but four
Of the towns / visited towns that housed
before the war from 1000 to $4,000 per-
sons. In slightly less area, the Identical COM
parison applies to twenty Of the twenty
two villages ! saw on this trip alone.
II you will take any section of West
Philadelphia and blow out the fronts of
house after house in every row and every
street for ten squares each way you will
have picture Of such villages as are not
literally Tazcd to the ground. If YOU will
take any Montgomery County orchard OF
apple trees and imagine each and every
individual tree cut off two or three feet
from the ground, the tree lying where il
fell at the last stroke Of the ak or the LAST
cut Of the saw, you will have a picture Of
the orchards of apple pear, plum and aprI-
cot trees of the Somme the Asne and the
Disc country. If you will imagine all the
farming implements and wagons in South
Jersey thrown into numerous piles, each
bruised broken and burned by dynamite
explosion, you will have a picture Of that
to be found in every village l saw on the
three trips,
And if, on top of all that, you will imagine
every well OF drinking water and every
spring i'm Chester County befouled with
the carcass of dead domestic animals and
arsenic
other drugs. you will have a picture that
portrays every well and every sprinp i'm
these latitudes If you will imagine every
house in Darby robbed of every chair
spoon, bed or whatsoever may be the mart
OF a comfortable or necessary houseboId
equipment, you will have a picture,of every
house not completely destroyed in the areas
| have covered.
And, finally. II you will imagine any ward
in Philadelphia devoid Of every living soul
save the very old aud feeble or the very
young, you will have picture portrayinp
the population found by the French ana
English troops as they entered evacuated
territory
Attila the Boche
In the Bois de TAbeye near FalIowaI
saw and mounted TO n little one-room bousa
built rustic fashion of native unbarlTod
birch. over its entrance was carved 'TIu-
burtus Haus." IL stands upon a high eIs-
walton and commands the country for mile
around. II was here that Eitel Fritz tba
Kaiser's second son. passed his leisure ana
observed The railing around the norch
shows his name in shaped rustic bircb Ia
ters. the name Of this son of the Kaiser
well named. indeed. since Eitel sIgnI6as
Attia. From the porch Of this house T. says,
ST. Quentin IN the distance. The cathedral
was intact but the faubourgs or suburbs
or - and -- were in flames
At Coucy and Coucy lie Chateau the
Joined lower and upper towns leading An
winding road TO the ancient chateau bIeb
upon the crest Of Its hill glorious r,or',,
ment Of the Middle Ages built in 1905 ana
now mass OF crumbled stone living Iav.-
like along the slope OF the hflps eIevatton
there IL but one uninjured house Fsysr.,,
'etnel one enn elther the roof Or -tha faaads