Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1918-10-04
:: The Truth About Belgium =:
BY BRAND WHITLOCK

the shrieking of the shells. and the
whistling, the humming, the bizzing
of the 0ulIets--and the red mass
of the peoples blooming between
And those were the English, only
two hundred yards away, the men
whose tongue ! spoke, whose
thoughts I thought, whose tradi-
tons, ideals, hopes. l shared, as
though they were mine own people.
1 peered long time, feeling strange,
lonely, homesick, in the trench
where I did not belong.
Back Through the Deserted Village
When we were out of the trenches
and had passed through the desert
ed village again, behind through its
riddled, empty houses and yards
grown high with weeds and flowers
that had sprung up this year with
no gardeners to tend them, and had
hidden the little captain goodbye
at the door of his hut, we were glad
of the shelter of peaceful woods,
whose lovely hooks, untrouoled by
firing, gave no sign of war until we
came to a clearing, where under
sheds German soldiers were at work
making barbed wire.
There was indeed a very busy
little manufacturing plant in full
operation; some of the men were
making gratings for the trenches
and others were inspecting and
classifying obuS that had fallen In
their lines, photographing them,
ticketing and labelling them, max
ing statistics in the slow methodi-
cal German way.
ITO show where they were manu-
featured" as one of them explained.
1 could see new campaigns in the
press, and when a sous-officer drew
out some ammunition which he de-
clared Indignantly to be American
Won de Lancken hastily exclaimed:
Put that away, you fool, don't
show it now!"
Then we must inspect a SWIM
ming pool, hidden away in the
woods, with spring boards stand
out over the water and high
board fence around it. Further on
through the fields and woods there
was an old farm house, long since
abandoned by it's occupants and
then occupied as headquarters by
a German battalion. The soldiers
were cultivating a little vegetable
garden in the courtyard, and peace
fully raising chickens; in the kit
chen with it's great. stove, there
was a desk at which a soldier was
sitting at a telephone, and there
was a piano!
Thus through the woods, we
gained the motor, and so past those
NH 70 a o.
AIDES "criblees" by balls, past
those fields with the flowers blow
ing in the sunshine, we came again
to the dusty suburbs of Lille
and must stop to visit a factory to
see soldiers making nails. A nail
is a nail and had seen nails, and
once having grasped the principle
as Thoreau once said, 1 could see
no reason for indefinitely multiply
ing the instances, but we visited the
nail factory.
When we reached cur hotel and
halted there to wait for another car
to join US a funeral procession was
passing; a man was carrying
crucifix at it's head and priest in
robes was reading his prayers;
then a poor open hearse, a cheap
wooden coffin, a shabby black pail.
and behind it a woman in mourn
ing, leading a blind boy dressed In
obvious new blacks. in whose up
lifted. pallid faces there was a rapt
expression and the placid smile
peculiar to the blind, at long in
terVals blinking his sightless eyes
in the glaring sun. Then the friends
and mourners, hobbling old men,
bent old women, and young wives
and girls, and little children, but
not one man of middle age, not one
for whom war has any use.
The pathos of all that hopeless
poverty, of those squalid, obscure
lives, ending futilcly in that last
and sh@5biest scene of all, touched
me with it's poignant sadness, as
the waste, the destruction and desc
lation had flied me with it's despair
The monstrouS folly of it all, and
then the moral indignity heaped
upon these innocent, inoffenSive peo-
pie, sinking under their dumb sor-
row, conquered, broken, passed I'M
der the yoke.
A little boy was plucking at my
sleeve:
''Un SOU" Monsieur ne begged.
Pour manager, sill vous plait." GA
sou. sir. if you please, in order to
eat.")
1t was one of those moments in
which the CHASTITY spectacle Of this.
our common life, suddenly revealed
stark and hideous, by some such
commonplace and insignificant
scene becomes intolerable and in an
overwhelming depression I found
myself exclaiming to one of the
young German officers:
Mon Dieu! que la vie est abom-
Unable ct tristc!" (Heavens! How
abominable and sad life is:"O
And he replied, with a laugh
and ready wit:
MATS les funerailles sont tou-
jours gales" (But funerals are
always gay.O