Connecticut western news., 1920-08-26
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 journey by motor takes the visitor something more than a 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 Kemmel, 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, it was the common verdict of the man in the mudhoie that, once out of it, Wipers and he could be the best of friends at a distance, says 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 a 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 degree hard to credit. And If only some mimic had been there to reproduce the shrill crescendo of an approach ing she'll one would undoubtedly have taken cover. Going out by the way of the Menfn 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 8 background, is to pass into the field 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 con- rades consigned them.
 The shell holes begin to grow green, but it is only a beginning, and If the trenches are almost unseen as one gnes down the road, were they ever wuky dearly defined here? It is a long @knS before a place is reached from Vffeh no battered tanks can be seen, qmd mOw and again they stand three q fea@ deep on the very edge of the Eead-atchsd in their first attempt aat ses mud. To look back OF. war at ltS xusorst. with almost all its evidences bst i. present slaughter. one could seapce1y better the viewpoint of this sr6A& A few miles farther, and the aEneRed forest of Houthulst, with Its Geres of stricken trees and not Hse lone, Agives a new edge to terror.
 Rkere Is something sound in the ,&nH6hS that one can see the battle W4ds lin. a day; the repetition would giW no new tone, but intrinsically the saxne mpression. As a lesson Ypres aha&its province could not be sur passsd.T \ Coming out at Dixmude, be- -Atg1 what was an almost permanent BsrheA line, the car returning to Zee x&rdgge comes again into a country wkshsis alive For the hnterland of Bsgfuh, has returned quickly to it. seif. The army huts which serve. in AAe'tx6ken areas as shelter for those who .have returned to- the shattered Erasg@. give place here to cottages S4arSadg substantially repaired, xand sae fUrgal cultivation of the soil goes 3Sryard with an energy and resource fofa6ss typical of no class in the world ks much as the Belgian or French speasantry.