New-York tribune., 1919-02-23

the more you see of such surroundings, the
more splendid our boys seem. | just want
to pat every doughboy on the head.
Prices are beyond belief in Paris. The
hotels are not allowed to serve sugar or
butter-not even for the morning coffee
and rolls-and until a week ago no cheese.
There is enough to eat otherwise, if one
can pay. Clothes and all such things
equally dear; much worse than New York
and they say that Italy is so per cent higher
than Paris.
AS to the peace conference, l think you
know more than we. The French are sore
over there having been no visits to the
front. I don't think any ought to sit
at the conference who has not seen the de-
wasted regions. Reading, nor pictures nor
imagination give any idea of what it
really is. 1t is useless to try to tell about
even the part l saw-it is just too harrow
ing. But l glad was privileged to see
it, it is now before anything has been
done-the villages heaps of broken walls
some of them without living thing-the
woods whipped to shreds, the fields full of
shell holes and the ground everywhere
covered with shells, helmets, guns and
equipment of all kinds. In Belleau Wood
the French officer who went with us that
day warned us not to pick up anything, as
there were many traps as well as duds, but
somebody picked up and gave me what they
call a necklace-a whole wreath of cart
ridges for a machine gun--but | did not
want it or anything l didn't want any
souvenirs of what boys went through
All the hlllsides have the tiny railed-off
squares where our boys are buried in rows
each grave as nearly as possible marked
with a cross with a red white and blue
rosette on it, and the inscription, "Here lie
the bodies Of eighty Marnes"-their graves
almost where they fell We lunched at
Chateau Thierry, in an old inn we'll dam
aged with shell fire, but the village itself
was not so much damaged as most, and
many of the people had come back
l see that when | wrote the above |
thought | had been to the front I know
now that | didn't know anything about it,
now that | have seen the north. We left
Paris two hours before daybreak, and it was
just light enough to see when we first
reached the trenches, and all day the horror
noon with Bethune, Lens and Vilnv Ridge.
| thought had read as much as most peo-
pie about it, and that I had some idea of
what it would be like, but | knew nothing,
nothing. The country is so different
those fiat, chalky plains that one gets the
whole sweep of the battle fields-the
trenches as far as one can see-and the
miles of those awful dugouts with so many
of their doors marked with the white
crosses, showing that the soldiers had
buried comrades right where they fell
right with them. When | saw Vimy Ridge
and what those men fought for for four
years, cannot see how any one of them
is alive to-day. After seeing that | was
ready to come away, for I had no more
strength-and what must it have been to
live through! There is no use attempting
any description of the destruction of Lens:
it is town of $4,000 turned into masses
and heaps of broken stone brick and iron
there isn't corner six feet square that a
person could live in. They had me climb
up on heap of broken stone and marble
about twenty feet high, and then said, ''You
are now standing on the top of the bell
tower of the cathedral'- the French Of
ticer, pointing to heap of rubbish one side,
said, "That was my garden" 1t is all in
describable, wanton destruction - horrible
beyond imagination-but though it seemed
to be the thing that the French with US
felt the most, to me the battle fields were
the worst. | was in the first car with the
French officer, and coming from Bethune
we went so fast that we got way ahead Of
the others. All at once he stopped and
said: 81 will show you something that the
others will not have time to see, if you
want to hurry" and he had me climb hill
little distance from the road, from whose
summit we looked down into big crater
and he said, "You are now standing on top
of Hill "A, which the British blew up with
10000 pounds of dynamite after a whole
years tunneling" Then he explained that
the whole place was full of bombs and
shells and bodies, as it is all over Lens and
the whole country | hear so much criti-
cism of the French because they do not
seem to be working anywhere to rebuild,
but it seems to me I can understand a
little why they haven't yet To me there is
a paralysis over the whole country that af-
fects any one who even looks at it-such
miles of horrors and utter desolation. Per-
haps. when spring comes little spirit may
come with it.