Gilpin observer., 1919-08-14
AS War mEMENTO
Public Square Of Arras Is to Be
Preserved.
Just as War Left II, II VIII Serve to
Remind the World That Here the
Maraudino Huns Were
Checked.

In the Little Place of Arras. where
once stood the Hotel de Vile, with Its
belfry and its peal Of bells, led by La
Joyeuse, is today notice board In Eng.
lish. 1t says that this place is to be
preserved in its ruin as war has left
It.
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,
hut 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 never used; by empty vii
1ages, with here and there house
broken; and so at last into the great
No Mans land of France. uninhabited
uninhabitable, where armies fought
and fought again, until all is de-
stroyed and men live gypsy life
by the roadside. But in Arras you
turn corner of one of the little
ctr ie hnI
opened suddenly and you looked out
on war.
For three years one could only
enter Arras from the west, by the
road from Doullens through the
Amiens gate or by the road from
st. Pol past Dead Mans corner, where
nightly the reiefs, 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 n
country unchanged by war. The
change is not yet.
1t is silent town. It's houses
stand. though sca~cely one is quite
whole. Their shutters are closed
their broken faces boarded up. The
town is like 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 loosestrife
grow. But this that looks like coun-
try lane is cobbled, and It's banks are
heaps of brick.
II is as you enter this lane that
you are conscious of something more
unexpected and more awful than any
ruined and broken things-of an
enormous emptiness in the middle of
streets.
When the years have passed and
ali the country to the east of Arras
has long been made whole; when the
trees grow again beside the Cam
brat and the Bapaume roads and
there are cottages once more in Beau
rains and Remy and Vis-en-Artos
there will still be that sudden emp
tiness beneath the sky among the mar
row streets of Arras.
Standing there, men will remem-
ber that once one could come into
Arras only from the west. They
will think of 1t then as of one 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
h,ll as at the ruins of great rock
where once the storms beat.