Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1918-09-06
LIVE STOCK BY WIRE

winrows on the ground, the air
was laden with the odor of their
balsam. The old Flemish woods
man, his hands black with resin,
stood a moment at rest, leaning
on the axe with which he had been
looping off the boughS, and he
explained that the trees were being
cut at the order of the Germans.
Where were they to go? He shook
his wise old head. ...
Ruins Along the Road
AS one drove from Dinant, all
along the road from, Brussels to
Namur, and over all the fields, were
new barbed wire entanglements and
new trenches with little steel tur-
rets and German soldiers, in their
dirty gray uniforms, their guns
slung over their backs, bending by
the wayside picking buttercups!
The steel turrets were the latest
thing in trench warfare, 1t was
said. and they were not altogether
undressing to the natives SINCE
they suggested the possibility OF
retreat. and gave rise to constant
rurnors. that the Germans were
about to fall back along the line
of the Meuse. There were ruins
too. at Namur, especially In the
Grand Place. and Dinant was an
other and a worse Louvaln. The
charming little village was quite
cone. the curious spire, something
like a ninaret, so familiar IN the
nictures of the town, had dlsap-
neared and in the main quarter
the roor people were digging
among the ruins, pathetically huht-
ing some souvenir of their broken
lives. or. with a courage that was
remarkable, perhaps trying to clear
au,av the ruins in order to remake
their lives. We drove on through
the town, through the clett OF the {,
Rocher Bayard, and on up the MIL
1rha Meuse flowed below, and two,
IittIe walloon children stood star
;ro NJ ms They we're just ike
children who were shot that terri
hIe- August evening near the very
srsot on the shore of the river that
flowed by so TRANQUILITY. FortuH-
atelv there was sorhe candy 10 give
then. 80 49,, ;.
Tbere are many ineXplicaole IN
justices under the sun, but nohe' 10
my mind, so inexplicable as innocent
suffering, the cruelty inthcteo On
. children and animals. knew d
man near Givet, rocky woooeo
country beyond Dinant, where many
of the earlier atrocities were com
mitted by the Germans. On the
night of the twenty-third OF August
from his home he saw twenty-seVen
villages in flames, the flames Oh
Dinant rising higher than any otner
in the sky, glowing red as from an
inferno. And of all the civilians
who were stood up against the walls
To be shot not one asked for mercy
But yes-there was one-a little BOY
of twelve, who, just as they placed
him against the wall began TO
whimper and begged piteously. The
bullets stilled his crying.
Rut nature. like man, though not
so cruel, since there is impassivity'
a kind of impersonality, in her cruel
~. forgets. Already the ruins Oh
Dinant had taken on an ancient anu
detached, almost a classic air, SO
that we viewed them with haroly
more emotion than we viewed the
ruins of the Abbaye Nillers, on the
road homeward, a point Tor the tour
lists before the war, when there were
no other romantic ruins to see IN
busy Belgium.
German soldiers were guarding
the ruins there In that gloomy ravlne'
lest some one remove them, per-
haps; although they allowed US
to wander about among the ruins
and to try tc decipher the insrrlp-
tions on the stone tablets, taken
from the graves of the old aboots
and the mobiles who once were BUR
led there "Sauviter ct Fortiter
and Post Tenebra sperro lucem.
All. yes, perhaps! The rocks cawed
from the dripping messy. walls and
Tapped heavily over the high nave
and transept that was open to the
sky. And all this ruin was wrought
in the name of Democracy during
the French revolution, as ruin is
wrought today in the name of mon
archy. Is the folly of the human
race after all quite incorrigible?
CONTINUED Next 1ssue)
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