Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 200, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 September 1918 — Unconguered Dixmude [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Unconguered Dixmude

DIXMUDE, seated high among the pastures, was like a peasant in holiday garb of pale green with the rivers Yser and Handzaeme tied to her girdle. She was like a girl standing motionless looking upon the smooth countryside, with’the sea In the distance —the sea toward which everblew a crisp breeze that made bend the willows of her winding paths, writes Douglas Ainslle In London Graphic. To Dixmude, Indeed, there Is also applicable another (figure—the martyr—and her history from the middle ages.has had its full share of blood and iron ever since it was but a simple fortress built upon an eminence above the place *where various rivulets unite to form the Yser. In the thirteenth century Guy de Dampierre surrounded it with powerful ramparts, and through all the centuries that have followed, from the period of the civil wars that rendered desolate the low countries in the fourteenth century to the days when Rantzau and Turenne entered it as conquerors, the city has been one of the delights of the low countries. Dixmude did not attempt resistance to the troops of the French Revolution, and it is notable that whenever she has been allowed some respite she has quickly resumed her peaceful commercial life. People Slow to Take Alarm. Her population had the Flemish phlegm, and even when the mobilization began in 1914, It was looked upon as a simple precautionary measure. Was not the neutrality of Belgium guaranteed By treaties signed by the plenipotentiaries of all the great powers? Had not this neutrality been respected since 1870? What cause, therefore,'Was there for alarm? Such was the confidence in “scraps of paper” that when a certain individual took it upon himself to announce Germany’s violation of the neutrality of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, on the second of August, and to prophesy the worst, he was positively hissed and accused of propagating demoralizing news. Dixmude did not Msh to believe in the treachery of the Germans. But events hasten on. News comes of the destruction of Vise, of the resistance of Liege, and that England, respectful of international treaties, has declared herself for the allies. White troupes of trembling fugitives who had escaped from the sack of Louvain and the massacre of Tongres and Aerschot, came pouring into Dixmude, toward safety and the west, in a state of pathetic desolation.

Ruined Beauties of the City. But the ups and downs of the siege, the false tranquillity, and the horrible awakening, must be sought elsewhere In print. It win, interesting to glance rather at a few of the outstanding beauties of Dlxmude which have disappeared beneath the blows of the Teutonic hammer. The Church of St. Nicholas was, perhaps, the most remarkable of the monuments that had survived from ancient times. It was built upon the site of the primitive chapel of the tenth century, and its interior belled the comparative modesty of the exterior. It contained the famous rood-screen, one of the marvels of Belgium. The screen was remarkable, owing to the enormous number of leaves, flowers, fruits, and even of minute insects with which the ancient sculptor had been at infinite pains to adorn it. This prodigious labor, lasting over many years, was accomplished by a single artist, whose name alone has come down, to us from the sixteenth century: Jean Bartet The old Beguinage, inhabited by women who were not nuns, and forming a lay order which they might leave at will, was a touching relic of the past It used to stand in the middle of tiie town, surrounded with high walls, crouching there as though from modesty. A low door afforded an entrance to the grass plot around which were grouped the little houses. At the further end stood a chapel whose low roof and damp walls seemed exactly to suit by reason of its very humidity, these good souls in the evening of their life, dwelling so peacefully there under the mild rule of their patron. Saint Begue. Favorite Place of Artists. Yes, Dlxmude was the younger Mater of her neighbor, Bruges, offering to tired eyes a like prospect of green and leafy surprises along its ancient quays. Unlike Bruges, Dlxmude was never “discovered” by the fashionable crowd. The same old North and Boman bridges, the bridge of the Peage and of the Allee, which spanned the Krekel-

beek, were never trod by feet hurrying from one table d’hote to another. The calm burghers of Dixmude had crossed and recrossed them, in the hard frost of winter or in the golden evenings of autumn, when the sun came to die amid prodigious magic of light The charm of Dixmude made especial appeal to artists, and the Parisian Leon Cassel was one of Its most fervent admirers. He left Paris every summer to plunge again into the in; spl ration which came to him from the old walls peopled with old memories, and it is largely thanks to him that Dixmude is still living for us, though many of his finest pictures have, alas, been destroyed by the fury of the Hun. Monday, market day, was the most animated of the week. On that day Dixmude was alert at dawn, roused from its customary repose. The good women of Essen, of Woumen, of Caeskerke, the jovial dealers from Routers and Poperinghe, drovers from Ypres and Furnes shouted their broad jokes at one another as they pressed on to the Woumenstraat. The butter market presented just before the war a spectacle as stirring and as picturesque as it had presented for centuries, and with little difference.

Airplane View of Dixmude.