Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-07-26
DESOLATION
By DR.. Frank Crane

There are words that are mere sounds,
until some experience comes along and fills
them with meaning.
"Desolation" was little more than a sono-
rous term from the dictionary, till l saw
Ypres, on June IL, 1921. Now, whenever
shall hear the word again, those anguished
fragments of walls, thrust gauntly up from
the ruined heaps like splintered bones, will
always appear before my minds eye.
[ have seen the wreck of town after a
fire, and once saw place where a tornado
had passed and smashed houses as kindling.
Here and there I have see destruction, but
never real, utter, and complete desolation
till Ypres.
The big public square of Ypres was called
the Grana Place. On the north side of it
stood before the war the famous Cloth Hall,
for the people of this part Of Belgium were
great weavers and cloth merchants, and
back in the thirteenth century this region
was one of the wealthiest spots in the world,
and the cloth merchants put up building
that was the marvel of the age, to house
fifty their meetings.
This Cloth Hall was the most beautiful
Gothic structure in Belgium and one of the
architectural gems of Europe.
Now all tkLt is left of it is a jagged up
thrust of shattered stone, like a blackened
tooth protruding from the gums of an old
crone.
And you remember reading the names
Lens, Warneton, and Puelkapelle-in the war
news! rOQ0 through CQ0S0 pldC0S ySSCef-
day, and that is all they are-places. Not
one stone was left standing upon another.
1t is as if some angry monster had not only
murdered the towns, but tramped them
under his heavy hoofs till he had ground
their bones to pulp.
Shacks and temporary houses stand about
where the people live who are clearing up
the debris, but they only accentuate the awful
waste.
Some of the fields are smoothed out and
the lush crops are growing, for this is q
most fertile soil, and Nature is quick to begin
her healing, but many parts of the land are
still but acres deep holes where the shells
have upheaved it as the waves of the sea.
Along the edges of the fields are windrows
of tangled and rusted barbed wire, and here
and there Drowned piles of shells. The she'll
crop was thick about here
l said the dead towns were perfect pictures
| of desolation, but still more perfect picture
| is a dead forest
Such is the -orest of Houthulst, not far
| rom Ypres.
| Imagine thick wood composed of trees
| without leaves and with only stumps OF
| branches, only trunks, and many of them
| splintered, lifting themselves gray and dead
! into the sky.
| 1t seemed as though [ were looking on
| some forest o. hell, so lonely and spectral
and CHASTITY it was | half expected some
! fire-breathing dragon to come crawling out.
And what was it all about? What quar-
other and ploughed the ground with burstin ;
shells for fou~ years in their efforts at mu-
tual humiliation? BUSY as the devil is, not
! the slightest" Their governors had quar-
relied over a flag and a treaty. And instead
of showing the people how to cooperate, to
join together in mutual effort to conquer
Nature and build up all nations in wisdom
and beauty, they had let Competition do it's
perfect work.
AS 1 go along this battle front, through
this l. cnue of Perdition, I find it hard to
believe the hideous tale of what happened
here. The sky is smiling, and the earth
so green.
Copyright, 1921, by Frank Crane.)
When some girls answer the door bell you
can't tell whether they've been baking or are
going to town.
Some people seem to think that taking
Germany into the league would Rs carrying
Preparations too fags