Fulton County tribune. (Wauseon, Ohio) 1883-1925, 1920-07-23
old 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 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. 1t was a point moot
ed with wearisome frequency in the
real days of the place-when it was
'.functioning," as one would have sa1G
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 a
few of the armchair gentry whose
instant presence would have been well
coined. But, for himself, it was the
common verdict of the man in the
mudhole 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 when
rises the battered tower of the Cloth
hall, in the high day and under
| burning sun; coming, too, unscatned
and unfearful from what was unmis-
| takably the direction of mo Mans
| Land" one had to question such
| verdict, and finally, under the st1mu-
| lation of hundred quickening memo
ries, allow the appeal. For the in
terest of Ypres and of all the ground
| In front of it 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 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
background, is to pass into the field
of an endless battle from which moth
| ing has been cleared but the dead ;
| and though elsewhere something has
| already been done of that "concentra-
ton" 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 com.
rades consigned them.
The shell holes begin to grow green
but it is only 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 no battered tanks can be seen
and now and again they stand three
or four deep on the very edge Of the
road-ditched in their first attemp
at the mud. To look back on war a
It's worst, with almost all its evidence!
but present slaughter, one coul(
scarcely better the viewpoint of thi'
road A few miles farther, and tn,
murdered forest of Houthulst, witt
its acres of stricken trees and not {
live one, gives a new edge to terror
There is something sound in tn
notion that one can see the battl
fields in a day; the repetition woul'
give no new tone, but intrinsically tn
J same impression. AS lesson Ypre
and it's province could not be sur
passed. Coming out at Dixmude, be
hind what was an almost permanen
boche line, the car returning to Zee
J brugge comes again into a countr
which is alive. For the hinterland o
Belgium has returned quickly to II
self. The army huts which serve Il
the broken areas as shelter for, thos
who have returned to the shattere
villages, give place here to cottage
already substantially repaired, an
the frugal cultivation of the soil goe
forward with an energy and resource
j fulness typical of no classein the worl
| so much as the Belgian or Frenc
, peasantry.