Evening star., 1922-10-29

oIN lEt past "eth nave pteH
- motoring over the devastated
region. debating descriptions
and making photographs of
the new farms, new factories and new
buildings that have sprung Phoenix
like from the ashes of war. I have
had my secretary. Dale n. Houghton.
at my elbow taking my notes. and
Charles g. Colt, a Harvard junior,
who got his schooling in France. in
terpreting my talks with the people
In addition. the government has given
me a guide in the person of Lieut..
Robert DesrousseauN. a man who was
wounded and gassed a dozen times
during the war and who knows the
battlefields as you know the palm of
your hand.
We started at Rheims and rode back
and forth. making many detours and
going through Chateau Thierry. along
the Chemin des DANES. by scissors,
st. Quentin. Arras. Albert and score
of other cities and towns. travelling
through the valleys of the Marine, the
Aisne. the Disc and the Somme, and
ending our journey here at Lille. in
the department of the Nord. Some
of the time we were so close to the
frontier that l could have thrown
stone from France into Belgium, and
again as far south as the Germans
got In their rushes toward Paris.
Before that / had travelled through
other parts of the battlefields. so that
l have, as it were, almost the whole
of recreated France in my eye.
1 say recreated France, for The
country I have seen is a new France,
rising more rapidly out of the ruins
than did San Francisco after the
earthquake or Chicago or Baltimore
after their fires. We thought those
works of rebuilding enormous. They
were like fitting together the toy
house of a baby compared to the great
work going on here. The reconstruc-
tion is SO vast and so rapid that I
despair of making you realize the
marvels that have sprung up since the
treaty of peace was signed.
villages, cities and factories rising
like magic out of the most terrible
ruins Mines. blown up and flooded,
pumped out and at work again under
the mighty shaft houses which have
risen above them! Farms, cut up by
sh ell holes and covered with net of
barbed wire now as smooth and as
clean as your garden and loaded with
crops. New roads and railways. The
work recalls that mighty event of
thousands of years ago when God di-
vided the light from the darkness
and in the space of six days laid the
! foundations upon which man since
then has been building.
nut before I describe what has been
ID done and is doing, let me give
you a glimpse Of the region through
which 1 have travelled and what it
looked like before the Germans be-
gan their work of destruction.
have the facts and figures from NJ.
Charles Rebel. the minister OF the
liberated regions. but l shall take the
liberty of translating the hectares
into acres, the kilometers into miles,
the francs into dollars. and of using
round numbers and plain. simple
American comparisons that you may
the more easily grasp just what 1t an
means.
In the first place. the country de-
stroyed by the Germans lies in north
France, this side of Belgium. running
from the North sea TO the Rhine and
reaching south almost to Paris. 1t
comprises 5000 square miles. IL Is
one-sixth as big as Indiana and two
thirds the size of Massachusetts. 1t
embraces ten of the richest depart
ments or states of the republic OF
France and ne-thirty-sixth of its
territory. Divide France into fields
If thirty-six acres. and one acr" I'll
each field was fought over. Collect
all its people, and one in every six
lived in this battlc-scarred region.
and that sixth paid more than its
share of the taxes. The actual num-
her was about twice as many people
as we have in Philadelphia, or as
MANY as there are in Chicago, De-
troit and Cleveland combined.
To appreciate how dense was the
population of this area, let us con-
tinue our comparison with Indiana.
In 1920 that state had less than
4 900 900 Hoosiers. You could multi
ply it's population by nine and it
would still be less thickly settled
than was this section before the fate
Of Sodom and Gomorrah fell upon it
out of the skies. We have more souls
I'm Rhode Island in proportion to area
than in any other part of the Union. !
The number equals 500 for every
square mile. These ten departments