The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-02-01

O6SOIaL1On anu nOrTOrt In0y were less expressing in those beautiful days of summer just passed, when the flow CTS made our ruins more cheerful; when the Jasmine, the creeping clim Der, hung charmingly over the walls of our ruined houses and thae crumb- ling church porticos. In those days our soldiers, passing to and fro, seem ed more alert under the bright sun of September.
 But today the signs of the wintef season are showing themselves with a sharpness that one cannot but feel Everything is changed under an icy rain and black sky. I do not recog- nize, 50 to speak, the same fifty kilo- metres of this zone that I have gone over a hundred times-and which, are, beside, but a portion of our great wasted area It seems tonight as though my eyes were opened on new scenery, the aspect of which IS no longer bearable. Indignation and hate rise up in my heart like a flood.
 Trreparable Destruction
 Farms, orchards, hamlets, villages and small towns, from top to bottom everything has been destroyed; des- troyed in such a manner that nothing can be used again. It will be impos- stbIe to rebuild because all the walls have been destroyed at the bottom and not stone remains in place. With what fury and internal patience they have carried on the destruction!
 All along what was once streets the tattered fronts of buildings which still hold, look at you through holes which were once windows, but there are no longer outside shutters or easements and they look like the sockets in a corpse from which the eyes are gone. Now and then the roofs have, as they fell, made the beams burst through and raise themselves like long sup plicating arms toward the sky that it may bear witness.
 Here and there these gort1las Of William have written before they made their escape, the sort of curses that only make you shrug your shoul- ders because of their foolishness. God punish England!" That is what you read most often on places on the wall in great ugly letters. Punished for what? Poor dupes of the Kaiser, poor credulous slaves whose bondage is as foolish as it. is -unholy, will they be
 
 upright as tc fight against the rage of the, German monster?
 Rain, rain! How cold it is, on our ruins! The mild days that were not so hard on our soldiers are over. Ii is almost winter. Those sinks of mud rthat we had forgotten about have formed since morning and we must submit to them until spring. On the Ra hA al wI TQ SS Ia continues cortege of camions SC heavy that they sink in the ground the ruts and dangerous holes are again filled with that gluey muG which spurts up in showers on th' blue garments of our soldiers. Soon poor brave fellows, they will agai1 take the grey tint of last winter wheI their clothes looked as though the! were made of earth.
 In the numberless camions whicl take them to the great struggle O. hack to the doors of the roofles houses, whose cellars shelter thei slumbers, one sees them all mufflet up for the first time in their oil-clotl capes like the hood of a priest. Mean while most of them laugh and joke there seems to be no sadness in thei eyes as they watch the sudden shower One would imagine that they woul be saying to themselves, What, afte we have already endured this fo three winters, after all that we hay already given of valor and courage must we go all over it again anothe winter-and that because of vii weakness to which we are strangers treason of unworthy Allies and. alsc on the part of the Neutrals, crimins Icomplcityi Without these dishonoI able people we would have finishe our task, we, who have never failed!
 As for our task. it is enough to loo around you to discover that it re mains the same, even more severe, fc the fourth winter ought to be the la and the best. Besides, one cannot bl think that the Boches, even the mo- puffed-up and decorated of then have been losing thei rprestige sinC our last great offensive when they T, treated in a body. Truly, for tho: who have that to think on there mo rain, even rain as icy as falls t night, that can blot out the remen brance of our wonderful victory C the Aisne.
 Masks Must Be Ready
 DQ11uS the WHICH Has Jul passed the written signs at all tl roads and ruined streets have bet , greatly multiplied, and these inscri tions have everywhere become one the characteristics of our devastat' districts. Usually they are great blat bands on the walls with enormo white letters and arrows that may read quickly, without the loss of minute in indecision, for one is g ways in a hurry on these roads whe often death gallops at your heels. z such a city" the big letters cry o to you from the black backgroun or gro suchl village" But alas, t cities and villages thus designated a no longer in existence, nothing I main of them but heaps of crush stones which retain but the vague or line.
 It is sad to read these names. Tn < might be compared with epitaphs in kreat cemetery. And to make t