The Miller press. [volume] (Miller, S.D.) 190?-current, 1919-05-08
AS WAR MEMENTO
Public Square of Arras Is to Be
Preserved.
Just as War Left II, Il Will Serve to
Remind the World That Here the
: Marauding Huns Were
Checked.


In the Little Place of Arras, where
once stood the Hotel de Vile, with its
belfry and It's peal of bells, led by La
Joyeuse. is today a notice board in Eng
lish. II says that this place is TO be
preserved in its ruin as war has left
1t.
Other places will be rebuilt again,
and will forget, but this Little Place
Will remain empty. and one day Ar
ras will be more proud of that empti-
ness and Of those few broken stones
than are other towns of the most
beautiful things that they possess.
For so Arras will remain always. as
II is today one of the rocks visible
on which the great waters of invasion
broke and surged and broke again,
but could flow no farther. There they
were held. There In the center Of
Arras you come suddenly today on
the dark line of their highest tide.
Elsewhere, across the open country,
you come more gradually In the
land OF war. by roads where troops
move. by fields where are lines and
lines Of brown and white trenches,
ready but v used by empty VII
lagos, with here and there a house
broken; and so at last into the great
No Mans land of France, u~nlnhabited.
uninhabitable. where armies fought
and fought again, until all. is de-
stroyed and men live a gypsy life
by the roadside. But in Arras you
turn a corner of one Of the little
streets and 1t is as If a window had
opened suddenly and you looked out
on war,
For three years one could only
road from Doullens through the
Amiens gate or by the road from
st. Pol past Dead Mans corner. where
nightly the reliefs, coming up, were
shelled. Beside both these roads the
trees stand. and the fields are TILED
and there are woods across the hills.
You enter Arras today through q
country unchanged by a The
change is not yet.
II is a silent town. It's houses
whole. Their shutters are closed
their broken faces boarded up The
town is like a man that sleeps after
long suffering.
SO you pass through cobbled
streets. very gray. clean. silent
streets, between those exhausted
houses, going down the Rue st. Au.
bert and by the white hospital with
its green vine leaves. Then you
turn up other little streets. with
their narrow sky above them and
come. very suddenly. on an open lane
with banks on either side. where net,
ties and coltsfoot and l~Oosestrifs
grow. But this that looks like a coun'
try lane is cobbled, and Its banks are
heaps of brick.
1t Is as you enter this lane that
you are conscious Of something more
unexpected and more awful than any
ruined and broken things-Of m
enormous emptiness In the middle OF
that tOWh vi tah hOo'oSS ~ 1919
streets.
When the years have passed and
all the country to the east of Arras
has long been made whole; when the
trees grow again beside the Cam
brai and the Bapaume roads and
there are cottages once more In Beau
rains and Remy and. Vis-en-Artois
there will still be that sudden emp
tiness beneath the sky among the mar
row streets Of Arras.
Standing there. men will remem
Der hat once one could come into
Arras only from the west. They
will think of 1t then as of n OF
those towns. now far inland and sur
rounded by quick fields, which once
were on the seashore. They will
look at that gray ruin of the town
hill as at the ruins Of a great rock
where once the storms beat.