Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 103, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 May 1919 — Rebuilding of Devastated France [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Rebuilding of Devastated France

Ravages of Warfare and Deliberate Hun Policu of Destruction Make It the Work of- Years.

By LLOYD ALLEN, Special Staff Correspondent. Copyrtjrtit, 1919. by W<*terii Newspaper t'nton.) ARlS—France is beginning !° rebuild the scores of villages destroyed by shell fire during more than four j years of war. The task, is J » enormous; it will require || years of effort, hut it will J. he carried on by the *J French government with 1 J only a small amount of outside aid and a German fund, collected ns indemnity. It is impossible for outsiders to try to take on more than a relatively small part of the reconstruction work in France because first estimates show the total damage amounts to something like $13,000,000,000, or approximately the amoujjt raised by the first three Liberty Loans in America, It’s strictly a national job, this replacement of 500,000 wrecked homes, 100,000 of which are mere heaps of stones. America is going to contribute some millions of dollars worth of material to the rebuilding of devastated France through the American Red Cross. Our aid in this direction alone will be valuable. It will consist of the distribution of supplies bought Red Cross for the active war work it carried on, which are now stored in the Red Cross warehouses and not needed urgently by the American armies. Large as the Red Cross relief will be in actual dollars, it must still be viewed as first aid work rather than the taking on of a program of actual reconstruction, that is, the actual rebuilding of demolished cottages. The Red Cross policy is to provide, when It can. the necessary articles French villagers will need for starting life anew. During the winter months there was a big demand for stoves. Thousands were needed. With one stove a French family could manage to get along through the coldest weather while the home deserted during war days was made habitable. But there were not enough stoves available to supply one-tenth of the demand. When the Red Cross speaks of reconstruction work these days, it has In mind the providing of such necessities as stoves, medicines, and simple necessities. It does not mean, when speaking of reconstruction, to take any part in . the rebuilding of damaged homes.

There are several American organizations that will rebuild houses, but these groups are takftig on a very limited number of homes and are not endeavoring to house anything more than a small proportion 6 the two million French men. women and children that were homeless wjten the armistice was signed. You must ride' through northern France day after day and see the desolation of deserted villages in order to get an Idea of the wreckage. The damaged area covers fi/<OO square miles. Streaked through this land are the severely-shelled segments where the land has been so blasted by thousands of high explosive shells and by mines that the ground has been left absolutely too tom up to be cultivated. *lt Is officially estimated that 250.GOb acres of farm lands, through one of the most productive parts of France, have been ruined by artillery fire. Towns near’these spoiled fields are usually completely wrecked. There is not enough left In fh_e v way of shelter to house anything larger than a stray

cat. Malancourt. which I visited on the way to the forest of the Argonne, is just such a place. A few hundred yards away from the town is a noman’s land. Crown Prince’s Grand Stand. Behind the town, as viewed from the former allied trenches, is Montfacouh, from which the German crown prince, in a concrete and steel observation tower three stories high, watched the progress of battle. He could .see, among other things, the houses of Malancourt crumble day by day until former homes were stone heaps with protruding timbers that once held up roofs. Today Malancourt can be recognized only by a sign board. A few stray German graves are marked with carefully lettered crosses on which metal identification tags have been nailed. On up the road toward Germany, about three-quarters of a mile, Mbntfacoun today stands almost completely wrecked. -Visitors to this territory never miss seeing the crown prince’s safe shelter which was constructed inside the walls of a three and a half story house —the only four walls left standing in the town. How the house around the crown prince’s shelter escaped destruction is still a mystery. Several shells hit it and the roof is partly torn away, but inside concrete walls three feet thick, built during the actual battle, the crown prince had what was probably the finest ringside seat for the big fight that can be found anywhere on the long battle line from the North sea to Switzerland.

From the roadway in front of this ’house you have to look sharply to detect even a trace of the tower Inside. From a point 300 feet down the "road the tower is invisible. Varennes, on the old French frontier, is another of the more interesting French towns, probably 80 per cent i destroyed, even though the walls of ! many houses remain standing. Here It I was that Louis XVI. escaping from Paris and from the mob that finally executed him, was caught and returned. Where Louis XVT. with his queen, was recognized and arrested: Ameri lean negro infantryman were drilling j the day I passed through the . town. . Across the river on the ruins of housed ! a Y. M. C„ A. hut some hundred feet ! in length and 20 feet wide was in full operation, selling cigarettes and giving

away some of the finest hot chocolate In France to a crowd of infantrymen—another of the American outfits quartered near the hut, all anxious to catch a steamer home, ny the way. The chocolate can, a ten-gallon affair with a big brass spigot, was placed on an empty padking case. Around the can were discarded condensed milk tins—-the only cups available because this hut was just starting operations. And every infantryman was supposed to drink as much chocolate as he desired. Coffee could also he had. A small sheet.iron stove, with a pile of kindling chopped from timbers of ruined French homes, warmed the whole place. There were no negro troopers in the hut at the time. But the Y-workers evidently had a system of providing for the comfort of both blacks and whites without jarring the susceptibilities of either. I saw such an arrangement working smoothly In a Y-canteen In Verdun —the only comfortable spot In blocks of ruined houses. It was where the allied and German troops stood opposl/e each other, month in and month out during the days of strictly trench warfare, that villages were completely wiped out by intense and terrific bombardments. But when either side was making a rapid advance the destruction of property was considerably less. For instance, in the great German drive of September 1914, when the kaiser wa» striking at Paris, very little destruction was caused, except at the places where the terrible fighting took place during, the first battle of the Marne, that is. along byj»,Meaux, Sezanne, Vitry-le-Francois and Revigny. In other words, the destruction was worst at the points where the battle was turned, the scene of the fiercest fighting. Along the Somme and the Aisne, the saafte conditions prevailed. Here the destroyed area is from 10 to 12 miles Across, in many places.

Then there was another kind of destruction —the willful kind, wrought by German troops in some of the big retreats. All through thg war. even to the final fights of 1918. the Germans consistently wrecked property rather than let it revert to the French in a fair state of preservation. Willful destruction in France, as a German policy, started in the spring of 1917. about the time America came into the war.