The Cordele dispatch. (Cordele, Ga.) 19??-1971, 1919-04-25
GERMANS WROUGHT
RUIN in FRANCE
REQUIRES SEEING TO BE-
LlEVE ALL

Paris, March q. Correspondence
of The Associated Press. III am
afreaid the Peace Conference is going
10 let the Boches off too easily said
Professor Louis Dubois, deputy for
the department Of the Seine, to the
Associated Press today. Professor
Dubois has made special study Of
the economic situation in northern
France produced by the destructive
ingenuity of the Germans. He has
submitted to the Chamber OF Depu-
ties a detailed report of his findings.
Are the Germans to be spared?"
he asked with their industries I'M
impaired they Will have seized the
markets long before we are ready to
compete with them. If only President
Wilson would come and see with his
own eyes what utter ruin and de-
struction they have brought upon
our unhappy land.
lone has to see the destruction
with ones own eyes" he went on.
Much has been cleaned up already.
With devilish ingenuity the German
made specially of destroying the es-
senti&l things. They even had ma
chine specially devised to destroy
railways points. General Gassouin,
who commands the northern section,
told me that that it will take two
years before the railway system is in
in proper working order again.
Transportation is interlocked with
all the the big difficulties we have to
cope with. There is the question of
raw materials apd the question Of
labor. If. by rehabilitation, we get
labor we must transport the men to
places where they are needed. Then
we must house and feed them There
is neither food ror housing accomda-
ton. To provide it, we again need
transportation.
"We are asked why we cannot
make fuller use of the canals but
these canals served as lines of de-
tense for the enemy. Their banks
are battered, they are full of debris
and need dredging. Many of the locks
are destroyed.
'"The pits of the coal mining district
are flooded nplaces. One or two may
be worked partly in six to eigh
months but it will be five or six
years before the mines are in proper
working condition again. Where are
we to find the miners? The country
around is RACED and devastated to a
degree of which people have not the
faintest idea. There is not a house
left. standing in Lens. How are we to
lodge and feed mining population
and how are we to regain our prewar
output of 2O,OOO,O0O tons CT of coal a
year which even then did not cover
our home needs?'"
Asked if France was recovering any
of the textile, mattel manufacturing
or sugar refining machinery stolen
by the Germans, he replied that it
was difficult to transport it and most
of the French plants were not yet
ready tc receive it. 81 know cases of
Gremans approaching the original
owners of machinery and offering to
sell them back their own property
they had stolen from th2m," he said:
"Then there is the agricultural
question" he continued. "The arabic
soil in these parts is only ten inches
deep. Beneath it is a Sub-soil OF bar
rem chalk. The good soil that grows
wheat-where is it? The farmers will
have to begin right from the begin
ming again, as the squatters did in
America; that is, they will have to
prepare the soil for cultivation. Labor
and transportation again! Not in fiji
teen or twenty years will that soil
produce anything in the way o flood
grain"