Connecticut western news., 1920-09-09
OLD BATTLE LINES
Evidences of War TniCk in Viciaity of IpreS.
Shell Holes Beginning to Grow Green, but Battered Tanks Are Every where In Evidence on the
 Scenes of Slaughter.

Leaving Zeebrugge the first days journey by motor takes the visitor something more than hundred miles, with Ypres as the turning point and every variety of war-stricken lands and recovering countryside on the way there and back. It was point moot ed with wearisome frequency in the real days of the place-when 1t 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 a peaceful aspect Agreed. there were those at home who might be taken, not without profit to them selves and the world in general, over the 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 well comed. But, for himself, 1t was the common verdict of the man in the mudhole that once out of 1t, Wipers and he could be the best of friends at a distance, says a writer in 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 unmis- takably the direction of "No Mans Land" one had to question such verdict, and finally, under the stimu- lation of a hundred quickening memo ries, allow the appeal. For the in- terest of Ypres and of all the ground In front of 1t would not be denied. The place was like itself-in a degree hard to credit. And if only some mimic had been there to reproduce the shrIll crescendo of an approach Ing shell one would undoubtedly have taken cover Going out by the way of the Menin gate and turning up into the high road to Poelcapelle, with first Hooge and then St, Julien, with Pas schendaele rolling up to the skyline as a background, is to pass into the Held of an endless battle from which noth- ing has been cleared but the dead and though elsewhere something has already been done of that "concentra- tion" of graves which is to give our dead an orderly and lasting memorial, they still lie here, for the most part in the scattered resting places to which the hurried hands of their conn., rades consigned them.
 The shell holes begin to grow green, but 1t Is only a beginning, and if the trenches arc almost unseen as ous goes down the road. were they evei very clearly defined heref It is long time before a place Is reached from which no battered tanks can be seen, and now and again they stand three 6r four deep on the very edge of the r@ad-ditched in their first attempt at the mud. To look back on war at its worst. with almost all its evidences but. present. slaughter, one could scarcely better the viewpoint of this Edad: few miles farther, and the murdered forest of Houthulst, with sts acres of stricken trees and not a live one, gives (. new edge tb terror.
 Ehere Is something sound in the Dodon that one can see the battle fields in a day; the repetition would give no new tone, but intrinsically the sanae impression. As a lesson Ypres MRd its province could not be sur passedS Coming out at Dtxmude, be- btH what was an almost permanent s6che NiineS-the car returning to Zee brugGe comes again into a country 'yhfeh Is alive. For the hinterland of BslgIAm has returned quickly to it. self. The army huts which serve in the roken areas as shelter for those YfoShaye returned to the shattered viltagsA give place here to cottages asEsady substantially repaired, and tHs sfrugal cultivation of the soil goes fSrward with an energy and resource fitness Typical of no class in the world So much as the Belgian or French peasantry.