The Bridgeport times and evening farmer. (Bridgeport, Conn.) 1918-1924, 1918-01-23

the war. ''Un Pekin sur lie Front" it
is called, "a Civilian at the Front
and it was written by Sem, perhaps
the best known of all Partisan car
toonists.
It is illustrated withr15O Of the au-
thor's own drawings.
First appearing as a series OF art1-
cles in the Paris Journal SENS i'm
pressions of the war created a senSa-
ton from the outset The vivid and
highly Individual quality of them will
be quickly apparent from the follow
ing extracts:
L leave the avenue of the Bois de
Boulogne behind me under a spring
time sky. That nfght-G am at Chal-
ons. Next morning 7 set out in an
automobile with some comrades for
the front.
All at once, on a hight, T saw a
windmill with broken wings, making
signs of distress with the stu1npS Of
| them that were left. What was it
seeing so terrible over there in the
distance which we~could not yet-see2
Little by little the aspect Of the
country changed. 1t lost its smile,
became-graver. . Here and there,
on moundS.of earth, stood UP wooden
| crosses on which were hung forelorn
little red caps, looking like weather
worn~corn peoples overlooked in the
fields.
There rested roverTthe landscape, de-
serted now, a sort Of terrifying vague
ness. The trees had that frightened
look, those attitudes Of flight which
thew take on under the drive of the
wind, along sea beaches. Like the
ocean, the battlefield announced its
proximity by a. zone+sof terror, My
heart fell.
Military cars land muddy motorcy-
cfes passed usin waterspouts. splash
ing US merciless1y. We threaded,
along the unfenced road, intermina-
BILE lines of supply wagons, nomad
carts covered with stained awnings
and drawn by gypsy horses, and nun
dreds of Partisan auto buses, disfig-
ured, unDecognizable, returned, If I
dare say 1T, to-the wild state; and all
that, vehicles, beasts and men, was
rendered. savage by a kind Of tawny
war patina-
Soldiers who had the look of orig
ands roughly stopped our car point
ing decided bayonets at the doors.
We show our papers, we pass. We
are approaching the front, entering
into the drama
In this description which Z am at
4 tempting the word mud will return
constantly It has to. 1t is the pre-
scribed 1eit motif, tits the very sub
stance of the picture. What's the
difference? War is-war.
We advanced only with the utmost
4 difficulty through an unimaginable
4 jam of cars, of trucks, of noisy cais-
sons which bump, jolt, slide, skid in
= the. midst of furious snorting of mo-
i tors, and trampling of horses. 1t be-
comes formidable; my head swims.
And.in the, distance rumbles, like dis
tant thunder, the dull, measured, SOL
, emn sound OF cannon :.
Il We reach a region -trepanned ean6
- scalped by shells. The ground has
= been so uptorn, ravaged and riddleG
by German shells that the quagmire
looks like a. trough of quickhme still
boiling. YOu4can almost see it smoke
: The banks of earth which rise or
!, the hillside are, from base to- crest
bored and perforated in a thousand
directions, lea bit of, gruyere cheese
Everywhere, ranged in successive
) Ievelsaon TELESCOPES, are burrows, hole:
and galleries Scooped in the turf. YoU
, see the smoky openings of them.
Andfrom.. our distance you can alsC
see crawling and wading there {
strange population of mud-colored be
ings who are busy, who enter ant
leave. the bitches, come-and go among
: | the huts and shelters before which
81 kitchens ~saEages> are smoking.
4 All that resembles alike a camp O.
gypsies orsLaplanders, a kind of mir!
, ETimbuctoo, a. lake dwellers' city or {
fTiI1age- of the stroglodytes.
One seems in a dream. Civilized
life has been brusquely removed
/ abolished. The picture at which
am looking belongs to no time and NJ
country. feel myself carried bacl
to<the primitive epochs of the world
Asf to the-tertiarysperio the age of mud
\ This war has created for itself a nev
" stage setting which has no nam
yet.
Boaum! ,Boaum! Still, in the dis
L tance, the low voice of the can
: non.
t But c1ook how, from the bottom o
y that ravine, there bursts out an,
It comes toward us a cohort of palli
i specters, fabulous being of some spe
Il cies impossible to define. At thi
u distance 1 cannot as yet distinguish
II what the Iivid apparition is. Yo
u might call it a procession of penitent.
u of Trappistss clad in frocks of whitis
fustian.
1t approaches and becomes NOR
definite. Is it a gang of well-d dig
- gers emerging from that crater c
- snaire where the muffled defamation
of cannon rumble? All at once I al
dumb with establishment I felt my
- self frozen stir with a tremendou
70 and thrilling horror. 1 begin to ur
m -derstand.
~ They come on in one long lin
" which undulates through the deeI
,q worn footpaths. There are MOI
,e than 5000 of them. The horde roll
1e onward like a torrent of slime wit
at eddyings in it; soon it submerges OF
. auto, caught in this flow of mu
which marches.
rs There they are! There they are! It
I'd the relief from the trenches. Thes
or are the soldiers who have just .spe1
10 days and 10 nights in the trench,
az Beausejour. Nothing sketche
es photographs descriptions ar
lg idea of that terrifying and sublime r,
in ality. 1 want to cheer them, and IL
sounds are strangled in my throat.