The Washington herald., 1919-05-22
Resurrection and Life
In Wars Path of Death
William Allen White Tells How People of
Battle-Devastated Areas Are Rebuild
ing Their Home-lives.

slCnpyuEht. 1919. bg The Wheeler Syndicate. Incl
Paris. May :. 1919.-The story thai
follows is not written for those who
desire to read about ponderous af-
,airs of state. of boundaries and kings
and the weighty scrap-iron secrets
Of the Peace Conference. The story
Is to tell something of how the people
whose villages and farms were bro
ken and battered by war. whose homes
we're laid waste. whose life and all
is contact with a beloved past was
backed to death. OF how these people
are coming back to their villages, back
80 their farms. back to the homes;
.aow they are beginning the resurrec-
lion and the life of the thing that
KSnt down to death as a victim of
Mar.
The path of death lies about 81
niles wide and coz miles long from
lie Alps to the North Sea. 1t marks
Inc place where the armies OF the
allies and the Germans met During
;our years the tides of battle washed
over this land backward and forward
9ver and over again. No house was
irGt standing there in November. 1918;
Avery village was a white heap look
nS like a pile of cement on the plain;
occasionally a wall would protrude
ike a broken bone from the debris;
ierc and there a SCARED roof. gen.
.raIIy stripped of its slate or tile.
would stretch over 30 or three tot
.rins bits OF walls and. once in a
xhiIe. one found some semblance of
1 room in a larger house than the
est.
And indeed. in rare instances in
he larger cities. one or two or half
dozen frames would remain al
most untouched. curious contrast to
he miles of smeared dust and sand
md crumblinE shards about them
Sut riding through the district in
w.. winter one saw no life there
native life. By day soldiers.
lifted the stones from the
urcets piling along the way neat
yfumbed angular dumps of the larg-
p stones. But the walls of the
,ouses-such a few as were left
;hcItered only snowdrifts. and over
he bleak wastes OF the deserted
Ields the snow scurried to lodge in
bc gaping sheIIholes or the trench
,s ripped like scars in the dead
.arth.
aSot Life-symboI of Death"
No horse. no COW. no human thing
hat came from the soil moved there
only the soldiers-sometime
Americans. sometimes French or
2ritish and often Germans. all ex-
,tic. unnatural and often in the
old silent days weird figures moved
,brough the ruins. looking for the
,nburied comrades. 1t was not life.
Il was the symbol of death that
hese dark figures made at their
Ireary task
Then the spring came. And with
he earliest spring. even in March,
few straggIers came into the viii
ages and towns. They found there
generally some active organized
,rency of help waiting them The
nayor of the prefect was chiefly on
md The courage and the COM
,etency of these French civil au-
borities was splendid. Americans
# course, sent money to the de-
,astated areas of France; also they
,ent effective workers. And the
,oIdiers did much; but the French
constituted authorities after all
rere the main springs of the work
hat has been done to restore
T,anee since the armistice. As the
,eople came struggling back two by
1Vo. one family at a time. or per-
,aps even one member of family