The Oskaloosa herald. (Oskaloosa, Mahaska County, Iowa) 1885-1919, 1918-04-11
IS BEST
FORTH led CITY
HAS NO EQUAL IN THE ENTIRE
WORLD OF TODAY.
ANCIENT FOE AGAIN AT GATES
The Hun For Centuries Has Hunger
ed For It's Professionalism
Dream of Jules Verne is Be-
ing Realized.

After nearly half century, Paris
capital of France and perhaps the
best known and the best loved city in
TIE world, agains is under lombard
ment and practically in state OF
siege. And again the besiegers are the
same old enemy of the age, the Teu-
items.
Seventy.six miles from one of the
worlds most famous architectural mon
uments, the City Hall of Paris, gol-
iath gun is: emplaced, and projectiies
from thistmonster piece are falling be-
yond the great forts and over the
great wall that for more than century
have stood to serve as bulwaras
AGAINST the man-beasts of the North.
A hundred years ago, Jules Verne,
that colossus of the imagination sat in
| his little garrett room and looked out
over the spires of Notre-Dame be-
You'd the facades of st. Sulpice and
into the North, and visioned for him.
| self what some day would come. Verne
knew in his heart that the Hun as he
was the first to call them. never could
| be the victor in a gentlemans nght
against the Gaul; and he reasoned,
then, that he would bring to his aid
what means and methods of destruc-
| ton he could Paris rested hundred
miles a way, and the great conceiver
yisioned that some day he would have
a weapon that would overcome the ds-
lance. He foretold the invention OF a
weapon that would fire 100 miles, and
now. almost his greatest and most
secuted of dreams has come true.
| Minds rs great in their way as
Verne's however, were at work, and
| from the earliest times of the spirit
of conquest in the Hun these minds
have been vivid and realizing in the
spirit of defense. The Frenchman,
through all his history, never has want
| ed conquest What he wanted and
all he wanted. was his own and to the
end that those who would build to rob
him should not he has built to defend
himself.
The Wall Of Paris. W
! II is not Familiarity known, at least
| in this country, that Paris is the most
strongly fortified city in the world
and has been since the year SO, when
the War of Gallo independence CEN
tered around the notes and almost
childish defenses that served as ram
parts. In the first century there were
no such things as guns, cannon and
the other modern paraphenallia of
war and neither was Paris in the city
1929 acres it is now, but its defenses
! then were enough to withstand, the
hordes that came up from the south
and down from the north TO obliterate
her and her people. Today, to meet
the implements of destruction that the
ancient enemy has wrought 10 use
against her the capital of France is
guarded by forts that are strong
enough to withstand the most power
| full of weapons, even as the great
| frontier fort, Verdun, has withstood
millions of tons of high explosives
that have been thrown against it in
| the past three years.
At its first appearance in history,
there was nothing to fore-shadow the
vital part Paris was to play in the his
tory Of Europe and the history of de-
mocracy. An island in the Seine, now
quite lost in the modern city, was for
several centuries the entire city. The
sole importance of the town was in its
being the capital of the then insight
ticant Gallo peoples, who navigated
the Seine and doubtless from time to
| time visited the coast of Britain. So
| few were its inhabitants that they
earl put themselves under the protcc-
ton to their powerful neighbors, the
Senones, and this vasselship was the
source or political independence
throughout the Roman period of occu-
patton. The capital did not at once
take the name of Paris, but long kept
the name Of Lucetia or Lutece.
The Romans paid little attention to
the Gauls, and gradually they multi
piled and spread out. until early in the
third century, came the first herald of
Christianity. st. Louis and this race,
workmen always but extremely intel
ligent and of vivid mentality accept
ed the divine beliefs he brought. In the
year $50 begins the list, of bishops. and
then with the ascendency of Con-
stantine Chorus the glory of France
begins
Mentally alert. kind, these peoples
thew a new influence into the spirit
Of humanity and as this began TO take
shape in the lives of the other peoples
OF Europe the hordes in the North be-
gan to combat It, II was not in their
conceived policy that man should be-
free and equal; few should be mas
tiers in their own country and after
that they should be master Of the
world. SO France began her wars.
and except when suffering and per-
sonal oppression drove them to hys-
terra, they always have been just wars
each brave conflict furthcring the
ideal which was trulyin the hearts Of
all OF them.
War progressed in time TO the era
Of the cannon, and It was then that