The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-11-30
I|NED BRACE TALKS ABOUT RUIN AND DESOLATlON SEEN ON TRIP IN FRANCE TO LENS ANE0 ARRAs

dence looking for place to give birth to her family
 And then we passed to Ancres-lilxe- wise destroyed; and into what was Lie- van. where was held several years ago the meeting of the International Com mission of mining ventilation experts and the discussion of improved methods of coal mining believe it was here or hereabouts that Erskine Ramsay, of Bir- ningham, was sent to conference of the coal mining people of the world. He would not know it now. Nothing remaini but ruins. No brick wall, nor ,city hall nor cathedral nor mine hoist remains The great inventions of modern mine en- gineers look like canary bird cages trampled upon. And at Moroc, the same Mere entanglements of steel structures. like tangled cords or children's steel play. things that mean boy in the neigh borhood had destroyed with an axe.
 All Is debrfs-death to industry, to in- dividual and to people as whole There is yet lowering above it all like mist the peculiar stench of the human body in decay.
 And Lens-a city compact of 40 600 peo- pie and surroundings of four times forty. All of 1t is dead and gone. Noth- ing stands. The Germans bombed and destroyed most of 1t and held it for a long time. To take 1t the British bombed 1t and later sent gas into 1t
 Lens Is flat and in hollow. The gas destroyed the Hun life there. Hundreds and maybe thousands of Boches suffo- cated In the cellars. These cellars were walled up as graves when the Britisl entered to prevent the stench of the bodies in the atmosphere
 All the buildings had been destroyed There was nothing but heaps of brick and mortar and torn and twisted gir. ders.
 As we entered British soldiers and laborers were opening the streets for pas sage, though careful of mines the Ger mans had laid where they evacuated 10 days before. Piles of shells and unused were on all sides.
 But as we wended through in the tracks cleared by the soldier labor squad we came upon few old French women looking inNthe debris where their homes once stood for their valuables or their deeds to property
 In all of Lens there is not one stand ing building, nor is there one wall of a building standing. It is, wreck so com- plete that no landmark stands upright to tell of corner, or a surveyors point.
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 SdW WldI must nave Deen a DdnK vault of steel and concrete, full three or four feet thick, blown apart diagonally and lying sideways like q rent mausoi- cum. The top and one side and a half door frame were there.
 Think of all the bank buildings of Bir- in a debris of twisted steel and brick and nothing but debris from Nor ris avenue to Fifth avenue, and of all this debris nothing standing higher than 20 feet; and the vaults and cellars full of human bodies piled over with thou- sands of tons of refuse of brick and stone and iron, and concretet poured over and into this to cover the stench of decay.
 In this thcaght you will have an idea of Lens Think of scythe going through Birmingham and cutting down all it's buildings and of steam hammers them to pulp and you will have a conception of this town. Nothing but cobblestoned, ,streets,a blown and torn, full