Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 77, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 April 1917 — PERONNE IS LEFT SMOLDERING RUIN [ARTICLE]

PERONNE IS LEFT SMOLDERING RUIN

Germans Post Ironically Worded Sign: “Don’t Be Cross; Only Wonder.” STATUE REPLACED BY DUMMY Beautiful Old Church a Pitiful Mass of Wreckage—Everywhere Is Evidence of Carefully Planned Destruction by Germans. British Headquarters in France.— On the wrecked front of the Hotel de Vllle at Peronne the Germans before evacuating the city painted a large sign. This, when translated Into English, reads: “Don’t be cross; only wonder.”. .

The meaning of this bit of parting irony was only too apparenf on all sides. Peronne lies a smoldering ruin. The picture is most abject. Some sections of the city have been damaged by shell fire, but everywhere else there is evidence of carefully designed destruction by the garrisop before retiring. ~ ~ Some fine old residences which, because of their outlying location, had escaped both shell fire and torch, had been wrecked inside, top to bottom. .Many of them apparently had been used for the messes of officers and men. All bear evidence of the parting orgies. Furniture, mirrors, crockery and pictures have been shattered the mantelpieces smashed. In some of them were found pickaxes that had been used as the wrecking tools. The dining salons’ mirrors and windows evidently had been .smashed with Rhine wine bottles, which were strewn about In scores. The deliberate character of the destruction wrought by the Germans before their withdrawal from Peronne Is painfully evident in the once beautiful avenue of trees leading to the railway station. These trees were untouched by shell fire, but each one was hacked In two with axes and the gashes and chips ohow that the work was done within the last few days. The beautiful gardens of the outlying houses also were wrecked and every fruit tree within several miles of the town was sawed two-thirds of the way through and then broken down. Views Great Scene of Rain.

The correspondent of the Associated Press was among the first visitors to Peronne In the wake of the English troops, who have swept weir beyond that place. It was necessary to pass through half a score of ruined villages, which only a few days before were within the zone of intense artillery fire, before reaching the banks of the Somme. Crossing the stream on an improvised bridge and trudging through Halle, Peronne was reached over a road which had been reconstructed within 24 hours over succeeding rows of German trenches and through recurrent masses of rusted barbed wire, some of these being at least sK-feet in height and 50 feet in wldth.~There was a ghostly, silence in most sections of the city. No sound of war was to be heard, except once when a prvtng German airplane scudded over in the shelter of the high clouds and antiaircraft guns opened, driving him to quick retreat. British officers pointed out building after buildinjg where apparently the total damage had resulted from Interior explosions. In many cases walls, facing away from the line of British and French fire, had great squares blown through them, differing strikingly from the round holes made in other buildings by shells. \ Gaudily Clad Dummy Is Left. The beautiful old sixteenth century church of Saint Jean was a pitiful mnM of ruins, but one of its oil paintings stiit hung on a bit of wall In the transept and was miraculously untouched. The statue of Catherine DevoixT which bad adorned the great

square, had been taken away by the Germans and a gaudily cla(J dummy left in its stead. The railway station was wrecked. Including the tracks and crossing bridges. The Germans left many relics behind to show their occupancy of thp French military barracks. In some of the rooms Christmas trees gayly decorated with tinsel were still standing. In some- of the finer residences the libraries had been wrecked and the hooks torn to pieces and scattered in the streets. The Germans had left several foot bridges across the Somme, which were apparently intact, but, on closer examination, showed that false sections had been Inserted, which gave way at the first foot pressure. The correspondent, investigating one of these bridges too closely, had an Icy bath in the Somme. On the blank walls of the city there were many printed proclamations to the soldiers, including the entire text of some of Chancellor von Bcthmann-llollweg’s later speeches in the reichstag. At a chateau just outside Peronne the Germans had killed two magpies and stuck them -ou the Sharp point's of the iron posts at either side of the entrance. “I suppose that signifies some German curse or sign of bad luck,” said a British subaltern as he went whistling on his way to find, as he said, “where the war hud taken itself off to.”