Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 January 1920 — Belgians Can Not Find Former Homes [ARTICLE]

Belgians Can Not Find Former Homes

All Landmarks Obliterated Shell and Shrapnel Fired . in War.

NEW SURVEYS NECESSARY

Long Series of Disputes ahd Complications Likely ,to Arise—Old Boundaries of Farms Are Completely Wiped Out.

Ypres, Belgium.—Thousands of Belgian families probably never will find their former homes in No Man’s Land. All means of identifying them have been shot away. They will find homes, of course, somewhere in that desert , waste, perhaps on what used to be somebody else’s land. But the exaqt location of their own sacred bit of ground may forever remain a mystery'. Nearly five years of ceaseless bombardment has Obliterated: the landmarks upon which toe pre-war land surveys were based. The. old boundaries which distingulgbed one farm from another have literally been pounded Into the earth—too deep fort resurrection. New surveys will come in time, probably more scientific than the old-. Everyone who once owned part of the great battiefield will receive something, equal in size and as near, as possible to where his former home is thought to have been. Peace of Mind Vanishes. But to another sense this can never compensate. Nor can the old peace of mind ever fully return to folk so attached to their own little piece of earth that nothing less than certain death from shell fire—end sometimes not even this—could induce them to it. This is one phase of tomorrow’s human story in that vast, cratery desolation which reaches here beyond eye range In every direction—once one of Belgium’s most beautiful farming districts. L As yet. very few homeseekers have returned. Of these, some topk one despairing look gt the of waterlogged shell areas and climbed back on

a train for the place from whence they came—to wait a few months more until the process of reclamation has had time to make a little progress. < Others are still searching among the ruined trenches and shell holes, filled with marsh grass and stagnant water, for clues to their homes. Landmarks Are Demolished. The big stone at the corner bound-ary-?-;pnd from which, perhaps, airsurveys for the entire neighborhood were made—the well in the front yard, the

house, the barn, the shade tree over the gate—all have simply disappeared under war’s terrible effacement. Nothing. remains to indicate where they once were. What will happen when the rCal vanguard of the exiled Arcadians finally arrives? Opinions here differ. x Some predict a general scramble to stake out plots on the most desirable — or, rather, least undesirable—locations, a mild restaging of some of the incidents in our own- American history, such as* when the squatters rushed into the Middle West. < ' And then a long series of disputes ; and complications when otlNSto-arrive who believe themselves the rightful owners of -the “claims,’’ with probably years of legal entanglements in court. For It Is easily conceivable that under prevailing conditions it might be extremely difficult to dislodge a claim jumper. f