The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1922-11-26

Hc ltil ttlo Pi6hS'
decorated with flowers.
Earpenter's Worlds World Travels.
Copyrighted 1922 by Frank G. Car
penter.)
Somewhere in North France, 1922.
This is a film show of France ris-
ing out OF the ruins. Your seat is be-
side me in a French automobile. and
eur moving picture camera in front
is worked by the motor. We shall
pull out the slide as we wish. and
write the scenario as we travel along
Our speed will be rapid, for these
French chauffeurs are Jehus, and
they ''drive furiousiy." But we
shall jump from place to place
without regard to geography, and
shall stop where we please, increas-
Ing the text on the screen as human
interest directs.
France . Paris Gown
Most of our snapshots will be of
the country, which, just now, is car
peted with alfalfa, wheat, oats, rye,
crimson clover and beets. embroidered
with red peoples as big as a teapot.
and of all the colors God made for
the changing hues of His footstool
We shall find few blots on the land
scape. Every field road and forest is
dressed up to the mines" and the
whole is like a new Paris gown. /
love my own country but / do not see
how any Frenchman can help loving
France.
The patches Of devastation accen-
tuate the beauty of the new re-crea-
ton. on the chalky hillsides shell
holes are still left. and near the bat
tlefields the trees are like a dead
forest in Alaska where the fire has
swept through.
The Red Zone
But this is only in the Red Zone"
where the ruin was so great that the
government cannot afford to restore
1t, There the dead orchards and trees
stand as skeleton monuments of the
past, and weeds grow at will upon
the mine craters. Rusty barbed wire
and iron are lying about. but the
grass is sprouting among them. try
ing to cover the waste, and within
few years there will be no signs of
war 1t must be remembered. how
ever, that the patches making
up the RED Zone" cover hun
dreds of thousands of acres. They
are all hills and hollows; there
are great rents in the ground, and
the huge excavations blown out by
the mines make one think of extinct
volcanoes. The trees which are to
be seen everywhere else have been
shaved off by the war.
Nevertheless, in 1914, that zone was
as rich as these crops we are now
riding through. It's roads were vast
arbors. where tall poplars met over
head and shut out the sun, and one
passed towns and villages at every
few turns of the wheels. Now there
is nothing but thin grass, daisies,
wild peoples and weeds. Some places
are as barren as the Sahara. By the
roadside are the trunks of trees cut
down by the Germans, or il may have
been by the allies themselves for
military reasons. This snap is made
in old Picardy, where the Somme
river flows This department is a
plateau, in some places 500 feet high.
1t is a blanket of gravel and clay
with chalk underneath. We can see
the chalk cropping out of the hills.
and the mine craters are white. In
one chalk bank. along the roadside.
above some bales of barbed wire,
counted six shells.
Peasants Adore Old Homes
AS we ride on. We pass through vii
iage after village in all stages of re-
building. Some are miserable, some
prosperous, but the meanest is the
beloved home of a peasant who lived
there DeIOre the war HlpcC Vul tHt
town, and he is bound TO come back.
The government offers new land and
new houses where the people will be
better off than before, but they re-
fuse to leave. Take. for instance, the
rebuilding of Belloy- -Santerre, the
village near where Alan Seeger was
killed. You will remember his poems.
among the best written during the
war, and especially that which be-
gins: II have a rendezvous with
DEATH"
Well it was at Belloy- -Santerre
that death met him and made the
town a mudhole. The government
has refused to rebuild it and has Of
fered each Of its families 10 acres of
land, with good barns and buildings,
In a more fertile region not far away.
The peasants will not accept and
they are now living in shacks and
dugouts until they can save enough
to rebuild. Already several houses Of
brick and stone have gone up, and
their lands are being worked ON the
cooperative principle in wheat and