NAKED FACTS OF HUN VANDALISM

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3097, 30 May 1917, Page 5

NAKED FACTS OF HUN VANDALISM

IN THE WAKE OF THE GREAT RETREAT

WANTON BEASTS AT WORK

(By Mr. .W. Beach Thomas.) AVar Correspondent's Headquarters, France, March 20. I should like to put on record the naked facts .of the German evacuation of French towns and villages. I saw from a point within reach of tho pellets the very last shells fired at Bapaiime, have traversed many blasted villages, and have spent almost leisurely hours in Peronne—fondly called by the French Lα Piicello—which has lost under German treatment every touch other maidenly grace and beauty. With such opportunities it is not difficult to tell how much of the ruin has been wrought by shell-fire, how much by mine or fire or army- house-breakers. Calculated brutality, scientific evieceraiion, cannot cloak themselves under the guise of acts of war. My object for the moment is solely to. report facts, and to smooth out some of the rumpled contradictions thai necessarily result from partial messages and hurried emphasis. The facts are these: Aβ soon as the inhabitants were driven off and sent behind this great fortified line of which the German papers boast, all that was worth having was carted off and all the rest destroyed. The manner of destruction varied with the tiling,to be destroyed. In Peronne aro many fine trees planted for ornament. The German military authorities, probably from lack of labour, could not cart ..them away, couid not even epend time in/ felling them. So instructions were given to hack every tree, as a hedge-layer cut.? hedsefitakes, just deep enough to ensure the death of the tree. So the German left "his ma-rk," a V-shaped convict's mark, wit half-vray through each trunk of the avenue. Fruit trees are. more carefully severed than ornamental trees, and especial care has been taken to destroy completely the espaliers and prettilytrained fruit trees in which French gardeners take special and peculiar delight. I did not know why, l>ut the; sight of these little fruit trees with their throats cut filled me with more trenchant rage against the German mind than all the rest of the havoc. Probably a list of trees and other things that the inhabitants of the Bapaume and Peronne districts will need after the war is already filed' in the Commercial Department at Berlin. Houses Laid Waste. So much for the garden?. Now for tho houses. I do not know low many score I entered, how many hundred I etared into through the shattered facades. Along, whole streets, where every front wall was rent open, 1 could find no vestige of any shell hole or of the distinctive oval hdle that a shell usually punctures in brickwork. The work had been done, 1 am wholly convinced, by small charges of ammonal, one of which wafl found and most bravely carried away by one of the party. The quarters of the town where tho shells had been directed were very well defined; and it was in these only that the- front walls were erect, though damaged. Within tho houses mess and filth were invariable. It was a wonder how so much rubble could have been amassed. In the Hotel de Ville in Poronne, a. building spared, because used to the last as a hospital, each room, save only the cellars and dug-outs below the cellars, was impassable for debris.

The general impression of' desolation wrought by some bull-headed minotaw or vulture haipy was etched into the features of a more odious because, more human'and intelligent monster when the minor individual details of this general wreckage reached the imagination. Here was a long mirror hung against the wall. It was shivered by means of a hammer still lying oil the floor. Hern was a cabinet with shallow shelves, each, of which had been hacked by some blunt instrument. Here again was ti Renaissance mantelpiece finely cut and designed in marble. It had been buttered out of (ihajw and pattern by the bluut; side of an axe. Tho effect was not less brutal in tho veiy rare places where apparently something had been spared. For example, a certain number or books had been left in a fine library, but the greater number were thrown about the floor and wantonly torn and fouled. No pictures were left intact; no single table or chair or piece oi crockery. Indeed, hardly anywhere could 1 find trace of furniture. I. can only suppose that most of it. was carted off and is probably in the hands of the Prussian luimiture fakers, who lave great German' genius in their art. But liow much was burnt, how much earned off, is quito conjectural. In Peronno fires had been lit here and there, and a few houses were still smoking. In. Bapaunie, which I. only saw at mplit, the burning was more extensive. In the villages tho fires . were the biggest and most thorough, probably for the reason that the material was of less value. Nowhere do f any whole houses exist. Ihe churches are blown up by mines. Boche Beasts. J have said nothing of acts of destruction that have any military object. "War, as conducted by the Boche, is a beast's game and has bestial rules. Tho mining of all wells, except the ono or two left for chemical treatment, is, J' suppose, a military precaution like tho shattering of the railway stations and the permanent way. Indeed, with regard to military i precautions of this sort, my personal feeling was that by far the least thorough part of the work was the blocking of traffic. You could drive a motor at good speed along main roads soven or eight hours after the enemy had left th°in. '

Tho mining mid blocking seemed, to my eves rather casual and perfunctorv, at nay rate vastly infeiior thoroughness to tlio looting and the wanton excesses against property. Tho military mining and tree felling were done under orders. The stealing a*d breaking up of gardens and houses were done for pleasure and profit—con amore. So it is that' you. can bicycle along country roads in the rear of tho enemy and meet littlo obstruction. Scores of obvious checks and barriers have been omitted. But in all tho towns and in all the villages you may search from dawn to dusk for any single example of slackness in the art, or perhaps science, of thieving , and fouling. In September, 1914, in the close neighbourhood of Reims, a French general—

"a soldier and a gentlenitin" it' ever there was one—showed mo in n. little village shop lnw everything liail been sifted till nothing worth more tlmii twopence-halfpenny, was left in the heap on the floor, and I walked through villages robbed of every watch, every sheet, blanket, and bolster. But the German has advanced since tlioso days. He cmi now loot a large town so that not the value of a penny piece is , left, and lie can retreat over a countryside without leaving a roof or :i saucepan or a fruit tree.