Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-04-23
FEARS TREATY
IS TOO LOOSE
Frenchman Says Boche Is Not
Held Down Hard
Enough

Paris. April 23.-"I am afraid the
Peace Conference is going to let the
Boches off too easily" said Pro
fessor Louis Dubois, deputy for the
Department of the Seine, to the AS
sociated Press to-day. Professor
! Dubois has made a special study
of the economic situation in North
ern France produced by the de-
structive ingenuity of the Germans.
He has submitted to the Chamber
of Deputies a detailed report of his
findings.
Are the Germans to be spared"
he asked. with their industries un-
impaired they will have seized the
markets long before we are ready to
compete with them. If only Presi-
dent Wilson would come and see
with his own eyes what utter ruin
and destruction they have brought
upon our unhappy land.
"One has to see the destruction
with ones own eyes" he went on.
Much has been cleaned up already.
With devilish ingenuity the Germans
made a speciality of destroying the
essential things. They even had a
machine specially devised to de-
stroy railway points. General Gas
suoin, wso commands the northern
section, told me that it will take
two years before the railway system
is in proper working order again.
Railroads Bad
Transportation is interlocked
with all the big difficulties we have
to cope with. There is the ques-
ton of raw materials and the ques-
ton of labor. If, by rehabilitation,
we get labor we must transport the
men to places where they are need
ed. Then we must house and feed
them. There is neither food nor
housing acComm odations. To pro-
vide it, we again need transportation.
I'VE are asked why we cannot
make fuller use of the canals, but
these canals served as lines of de-
fense 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 dis
trict are flooded in places. one or
two may be worked partly in six to
eight 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 razed and de-
vastated to a degree of which peo-
pie have not the faintest idea. There
is not a house left standing in Lens.
How are we to lodge and feed a
mining population and how are we to
regain our pre-war output of 20,-
100000 tons of coal a year which
even then did not cover our home
needs?"
Industrial Troubles
Asked if France was recovering
any of the textile, metal manufac-
turing 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 to receive it. Il know
cases of Germans approaching the
original owners of machinery ~and
offering to sell them back their own
property they had stolen from them"
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 subsoil of bar
rem chalk. The good soil that grows
wheat-where is it? The farmers
will have to begin right from the
beginning again. as the squatters did
in America; that is, they will have
to prepare the soil for cultivation.
Labor and transportation again! Not
in fifteen or twenty years will that
soil produce anything in the way
of food grain"