The mirror., 1921-03-03


much as they did when the Yanks started
home. Vaux, that little Marne village
which the artillery behind the Ninth In
fantry blew to bits in the excitement of
June, 191S-Vaux has only one new build
ing. 1t is not much of building at that
just shack of wood and tar paper. And
it's not dwelling at all. 1t is a buvette.
1t is in the spaces between the villages
that the change is so remarkable. You
see it even in the rolling land of the
Argonne and the blasted countryside of
the Chemin-d For almost every
where some tilling has been done.
Visitors to the American graves near
Juvigny in the Spring of 1919 marvelled
to find that the old quarries along the
ravine on the side of the town, which had
once served as divisional headquarters,
message centres and dugouts in time of
battle, were then serving as homes for the
first six of the returning families, so that
children were playing with the useless
gas-masks out front while spartan perez
neiges bloomed at cave-entrances and the
weeks wash tapped in the wind.
Now another Winter and another Sum-
mer has gone by. The fields near by have
been largely cleared of their wire and
shells and have yielded some food and
little income to Juvigny. Perhaps two
hundred people are back in the town. But
most of the houses still lie in crumbled
decay and folks still make what homes
they can in the dugouts along the ravine.
1t is because of this scantiness of re-
construction as far as home building goes
that as you walk along ruined street,
Juvigny seems a deserted city. But it is
hardly that and you realize as much with
something of thrill when, in clearing
amid the rubble, you come upon barrack
and catch through the windows the un-
mistakable drone of childish voices. 1t is a
school and glance through the window
shows row on row of pig-tailed girls and
black-smocked boys declaiming the fact
that the Amazon is a river in PAmeriqne
du Sud or that Ceylon is an island where
the tea comes from.
Laboring with them patiently, his brow
furrowed by his sense of the time that has
been lost, you see fatherly young French
man. Perhaps he was a corporal at
Verdun when the armistice was signed.
Outside, on the bulletin board-for the
mayor-proclamation in the neat script of
the schoolmaster himself announce such
and-such an impending marriage in the
village, with doubtless reception to fol-
low at the shack of the brides mother.
A passing matron peers at the notices,
beams on these evidences of further re-
covery, and tells you proudly that there
have been more births in Juvigny than in
any other village of the Aisne Valley.
AS the American in France sees all the
preposterous havoc and blight still in
force, he finds himself thinking of pleasant
suburbs back in America, comfortable,
well-fed America, of tidy lawns and
overAowing Fords and children romping
off to school, of country clubs and poker
games and silk stockings and squandered
wealth. And of people who say: ooh, for
get about the war;" And he begins to feel
a certain -tingling resentment at America.
But then the train wheezes into Paris
and his taxi whirls him away to boule-
wards all gay with hustling people and
restaurants with groaning tables and such
food and drink as only the old world
knows. He sees luxury and ease and ex-
travagance on every side and he sees that
not all of it can be laid to strangers with
in the gates.
And he realizes then that all the selfish