Catoctin clarion. [volume] (Mechanicstown, Md.) 1871-1940, 1920-07-22
CID BATTLE LINES
Evidences of War Thick in Vicinity
Of Ypres.
Shell Holes Beginning to Grow GREEN
but Battered Tanks Are Every
where In Evidence on the
Scenes Of Slaughter.

Leaving Zeebrugge the first days
tourney by motor takes the VisitOr
something more than hundred miles,
with Ypres as the turning point ana
every variety of war-stricken lands
and recovering countryside on the way
there and back. 1t was point moot
ed with wearisOme frequency 10 the
real DAYS of the place-when IT was
"functioning," as one would have SAID
and among front-line troops in the
salient, whether they would ever care
to come back and see that foul place
under peaceful aspect. Agreed.
there were those at home who might
be taken, not without profit to them
selves and the world in general, over
tie low ground under KENNEL, or
where Passchendaele looked down on
the swamps, and there were not
few of the armchair gentry whose
instant presence would have been wei
coined. But, for himself, II was the
common verdict of the man In the
mudhole that, once out OF 1t, Wlpefs
and he could be the best of friends
ut distance, says writer III the
Manchester Guardian.
Riding into the place from which
rises the battered tower OF the Cloth
hall in the high day and under
burning sun; coming, too. unscathed
and unfearful from what was unlnis-
takahly the direction of mo Mans
Land" one had to question such
verdict and finally, under the stimu-
iation of hundred quickening memo.
ries, allow the appeal. For the III
teresl of Ypres and of all the ground
in front of 1t would not be denied.
The place was like itself-in degree
hard to credit. And II only some
mimic had been there to reproduce
the shril crescendo of an approach
ing shell one would undoubtedly have
taken cover. Goiyg out by the way
of the Menin gate and turning up into
the high road to POelcapelle, with first
HODGE and then st. Julien, with Pas-
Schendaele rolling up to the skyline as
Al background, is to pass into the helu
of AN endless battle from which moth
Ing has been cleared but the dead;
and though elsewhere something mas
already been done of that "cOncentra-
ton of graves which is to give our
dead M orderly and lasting memorial.
they still lie here, for the most part
in the scattered resting places TO
which the hurried hands of their COM
rndeS consigned there.
The shell holes begin to grow green,
but IL is only a beginning, and If the
trenches are almost unseen as one
goes down the road, were they ever
very clearly defined here? 1t Is long
time before a place Is reached from
which II" battered tanks can be seen,
aud now and again they stand three
or fnur deep on the very edge of the
road. .ditched IN their first attempt
AT lac mud. To look back on war at
i1S worst. with almost all its evidences
hut present slaughter, one could
scarcely better the viewpoint of this
road few miles farther. and the
murdered forest of HOuthulst, with
its acres Of stricken trees and not a
live one. gives a new edge to terror.
There Is something sound In the
noti"n that one can see the battle
fields in day; the repetition would
give no new tone, but intrinscally the
same impression. AS a lesson Ypres
and its province could not be sur
passed. Coming out at Dixmude. be-
hind what was an almost permanent
bochc line, the car returning to Zee
BRUCE comes again into country
which Is alive. For the hinterland of
Belgium has returned quickly to It,
self. The army huts which serve in
the broken areas as shelter for those
who have returned to the shattered
villages. give place here to cottages
already substantially repaired, and
the frugal cultivation Of the soil goes
forward with an energy and resource
funess typical of no class in the world
so much as the Belgian or French
pCaS;lntry.