Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1918-06-16
THE WHITE ROSE IS TRANSFORMED
 INTO A Y.M.C.A.
Little French Cafe Saw Many Changes in Four
 Years of War.

Behind British Lines in France, May 13.-(Correspondence of The As- sociated Press)-Before the war the "Estaminet of the White Rose," ty- pical French village cafe, looked out over broad fields and peaceful coun- tryside. Today all that remains of it is the old sign-board, splintered and bullet-marked, which hangs over the entrance to a new Y M. c. A. hut on the site of the old village cafe. The White Rose, in peace time, was the meeting place, every evening, of the French farmers, men with heavy boots and tanned skins, who came in for drink and smoke, served smil- inglv by the old patrone's daughter. Often the men sang the quaint songs in their harsh voices, and the rafters shook with prodigous laughter
 Then came the war, and the men carried their quaint songs far away south to the Ardennes. Other men, strangers, sat at the wooden tables in the uniform of the British army. They too had tanned skins and heavy boots, and sang strange songs loud ly. They called the patrone "Mother" and joked with her, win ming her affection.
 The Germans were advancing, and one evening their guns were heard. The inhabitants of the village gather ed their belongings and left their homes. The last to leave were the old inn-keeper and her daughter.
 The German advance wavered and broke before the British counterat- tack, but the German guns had done. their work. It was sad wreck, that "Estaminet of the White Rose," win dow-deep in debris that looked out over our fields scared with she'll holes and muddy wastes on every side. the men in khaki were still there, singing their songs as if noth- ing had happened. Shells continued to drop into the town, the orchards were ruined, the church-spire leaned perilously, and in front of the viii lage ran trenches with masses of barbed wire. In what remained of the little inn, staff officers worked by candlelight, protected by sandbags which darkened the home.
 One day a prolonged and violent bombardment demolished nearly all that remained of the village, and the Germans attacked. Hardly one stone was left standing on another, and on- ly the cellar of the estaminet remain ed after a period of bitter fighting in and out of the village. A crater yawned in the main street in front of the inn, but company officer work ed in the cellar and in the evenings were still songs. The fighting went oo%s c:I ground, sometimes the other, but al- though the cellar underwent many changes, it never fell into German hands.
 A few weeks ago, there was a Strengthening" of the British line, and at this point, the line moved for ward. An ambulance aid-post took over the cellar, the wounded were brought in on stretchers and attended to by candlelight. Then the sound of the guns moved further away, and an Engineers dump was established in the village. The cellar was filled with coils of wire and men working on machinery of various kinds, and the men sang as they worked. /
 Finally the Engineers moved else. where and a party of men came up and started building strange new house above the old cellar. It was one of the first of the new advance stations of the Y. M. c. A., and as soon as it was finished it began to fill un with crowds of men not so diff ferent from the men of the old days. One of the workers, rummaging in the debris in the cellar, found the old signboard, discolored and clipped. They have put it up over the door, and the "White Rose" is again doing h,1ciuocc