The daily Gate City and constitution-Democrat. (Keokuk, Iowa) 1916-1922, 1917-04-16

were COlu TO take all our provisions
with us, for you won't find crust
of bread after leaving here" and in
| fact in towns like Ham and Noyon,
where the outward damage was rela-
lively slight, we beheld the uncanny
| spectacle of a street of absolutely
empty shops. There is not yard
OF material or an ounce of food in
any of these towns except what the
| French army and the relief commit
tees are hurrying there over rapidly
mended roads.
| At Ham l handed the mayor sum
| OF money which friend in Paris
! had asked me to distribute. He an
| swered: please take it back aud
buy us provisions. Money has no
value here" At Noyon the clerk of
the town hall, who had been shaving
! for the Germans for thirty months,
was dressed u a nightshirt and a
threadbare suit of clothes, all the
plunderers had left him. Every stitch
of linen, every garment, every pair
of shoes had been carried off from
| the town, and the people have liter
ally nothing but the garments on
their backs.
This would seem small matter
| if they had homes to return to, but
every means of livelihood has been
taken from them by the flooding of
! their fields, the carrying off of their
! live stock and the destruction of
| their orchards. After two years OF
starvation and slavery they are re-
leased at last to find their whole
world in ruins.
There are two marked differences
between this destruction and the
savagery of the first year of the war.
The latter was the sudden act of an
army drunk with success, flung back
from the very crest of victory,
wreaking its rage on everything in
it's path, whereas the destruction in
the track of this latest retreat is a
deliberately planned attempt to muir
der the land as well as the people,
to drain it's life blood, to turn it into
a shelterless desert, and this insidi-
GUS deviltry has been slowly and sys-
tematically applied to a helpless
people who have been living for
more than two years in a state of
servitude to the Germans, who have
been feeding the Germans, housing
them, Shaving for them, for whom il
might have been supposed that some
feeling Of compassion and humanity
must have sprung up in the hearts
o. the oppressors.
There is another difference. The
Germans assert that their devasta-
tons are due to military necessity,
that they had to destroy everything
behind them to secure their retreat.
1t does not take military expert to
see that the way of securing the re-
treat would have been to blow up
roads and bridges, yet far more time
must have been given to wrecking
farmhouses, smashing ploughs, hack
ing down fruit trees, than to system
attic road and bridge destruction.
1t is impossible to find any mill
.tary reason for what they have done
Aimless' and indicative cruelty is
proclaimed in every slaughtered or
chard, in every stack Of shattred
agricultural implements. The idea
that cutting down fruit trees and
breaking up ploughs can check the
progress of an advancing army is
senseless as long as the roads re-
main and supplies can be pushed
forward The damage to the roads
in the region l saw is not hun
been if the well prisoners, tree hack
ers and furniture robbers had all
been concentrated on the job.
What the Germans have done is to
put fiery hate into the hearts of
every one of the French peasant sol
diers we saw swinging along in thou
sands toward the front. In every
poor rooftree collapsed into it's
y aIyar nod 70, a,.l h1 oh Al
der sees the image of what his own
home will soon be or what might
have been if it had stood in the path
of the German retreat. He sees also
the image of what the German home
steads will be when once he gets at
them. That last point is one for
the people Of the Rhine provinces to
ponder.
wrecked village to another over
hastily mended roads skirting shell
and mine craters, crossing boat
bridges across swollen rivers, with
lines of splendid shade trees lying
slaughtered by the roadside, orchards
hewn down, fields under water, |
thought of few words exchanged
in Appomattox Court House between
struggle history had known until
then:
Must our cavalry give up their
horses, General?"
mo, let them keep their horses.
They will need them for the spring
ploughing."
AT the very moment when
thought of these great words of
Grants, the noblest ever spoken by
victorious general, they were being
reaffirmed by his successors solemn
declaration that the United States is
at war with Germany
1t is impossible for any christian
nation not to be at war with Ger.
many. With such a record as il
spread here it is inevitable that
whatsoever Is not with her is against
her.