The daily star-mirror. (Moscow, Idaho) 1911-1939, 1918-01-14
OUT EVEN SCRAPS
One Can Motor for Hours in Region
Now Known as British Front and
Sce Nothing But Ruins of What
Used to Be Human Habltations-
People Hide in Cellars Lest Boche
Shells Find Them Out.
Bv FREDERIC WILLIAM VILE
of the viqiIantes.

or a village but practically a country
side. You can. motor nowadays for
hours in the region generally known
as the British front, sweep the land
scape for miles in every direction, and
see nothing but ruins of what used to
be human ~habitations. Your guides
point to a scattered dump Of brick
mortar, twisted timbers, indiscrimi-
nate rubbish of all sorts, lining either
side of the roadway along which you
are spinning. Here and there at IT.
regular intervals the bare, charred re-
mains of what once were trees stick
up from amid the debris and the
chaos. There is not a suggestion of a
standing wall anywhere, nor wen Of a
door or window-frame, and, of course,
no semblance of a roof. There are
only cellars into which houses, shops,
churches, stores, schools-everyth1ng
have been thrown into a crazy hold
all of a town-wide grave.
"We are now going through --,"
remarks our military chaperone, Ia
conically, and we recognize the name
of a place prominent in the fighting
during some important push" weeks
or months ago-now wiped from the
face of the earth as effectually as 1t
honest French peasants and villagers
had never striven through the genera
tons to make a comfortable abode for
themselves and theirs. One hopes that
the ministering angels permitted them
to evacuate the town before their
homes were splintered and crushed by
15-inch death-dealerS. One wonders
how many human remains may still lie
buried beneath the wreckage of beams
and sandstone. One SpeculateS
whether men, women and children who
contrived to escape the shells will
ever again be able to start life with
their dwellings, places of business and
cultivated fields mangled and devas-
tated. One is persuaded that stupen-
dous as is the work of destruction
wrought by twentieth century warfare,
the task Of reconstruction will be
enormously more gigantic still. Towns
that took years to make have been
shot to pieces in an hour.
Last Word in Perforation.
I have heard Of towns in our W
wild and woody West that have been
But - is surely the
last word in complete and scientific
perforation. In July, 1914, it was a
happy, thriving community of $4,000
or 10000 inhabitants, a smiling town,
with a wonderful Grand place and a
picturesque Petit place, a noble Gothic
cathedral and a splendid town hall.
Round the Grand place raj a quad
passing architectural beauty. For the
rest, the town was typically French,
1y which I mean a complex of neat
stores and dwelling houses, churches
ind factories, schools and estaminets
(cafes). Today there is not a solitary
building Of any kind in the whole town
hat is not entirely or partially wreck
I'd. There is not a single thing of
wood, brick or stone that is intact,
Not more than 1900 or 1000 people
i've there now, and they must. hide in
cellars most of the time, lest BOche
hells search them out. Death turks
n every street, wen though the Brit
sh have held it for more than two
ears and have extended their lines
eyond it considerably during the past
months. Though they have long
ince turned the town into scraps of
IS former self, the Germans seem filled
With an Unsuitable lust to fiatten out
ven the scraps. You walk through
Grand place, hugging close to the
yalls by order of your army guide, in
erpetual danger that a souvenir from
will land at your feet and send
,agments of you flying into the
eternal. But you are only
wing the life that the British garrison
nd indomitable little civilian rear
lard of 1,5C0 or 1000 people-mostly
d men and women too fragile to seek
safer abode further behind the lines
are living day in and day out.
Museum of German Savagery.
This thought occurred to me while
the tumbled-down cathedral
Id mince-meated town hall and the
field of desOlation and devaS-
ton lying all around them at every
Why not keep it just as it is ;
day, a pile of glorious ruins, as a
)rld museum Of German savagery? {
by not leave it, stricken, battered
ID MANNED in it's every structural
just as we saw it this day three
ars after, for the admonition, horror t
d instruction of a universe which 3
8 rushed to arms for the overthrow Y
liberty's foe? There will be vast '
raries of documentary evidence of q
3 Huns atrocities to educate and t
'rify posterity. But what are books n
d descriptions and documentary p
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