THE VANISHING FRONT LINE

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 248, 14 July 1919, Page 5

THE VANISHING FRONT LINE

j FARMING ON THE BATTLEFIELDS. i (By Roy Temple, in tho "Daily Mail.") l" Tho battlefields of Franco arc already 1 becoming battlefield farms. If tho oid I front.'lino i» to be preserved os a. placo ; of pious pilgrimage, then prompt action I must lie taken 'by tho French authorities, j for there is every danger of the battlefields utterly disappearing. . ! These are the facts in Northern ! France. Three days ago 1 camo "down tho line" for tho last time. ' As tho long troop train ambled slowly I through flio war zone from Ferenchics, I outside Lille,-to Hnzebrnuck, 1 gazed for j tho last time on scenes made immortal I bv the valour of British arms. j "But now changed! Almost I had to rub my eves as I pawed through fighting areas that I knew intimately for ,threo years. . ■ ' "Whero was tho old front line? I asked u gunner friend as we approached Armentieres, of cheery memory. "I'm hanged if 1 can spot it,' ho renlied as ho put down nis binoculars. Wire has disappeared. Gone-are tho Irnnch posts. The rusty debris of war has been cleared away. Even tho trenches have been filled in and the earlh flatten, ed. Dug-outs ha/o been pulled down and the wood removed for firewood or used for building purposes. The cause of it all Gang? of GermnA prisoners have been employed for weeks in collecting and burning tho debris, making salvage dumps of wire, corrugated iron, cartridge' cases, rifles, and any old metal. In addition the French peasants have come back. Their home? arc broken and ruined. They build a little shack of corrugated iron nnd wood propped up at the sido of the remnants of tho old farm. They have returned—women and children and* all—to the old home. Quickly they net lo work with French method and industry to remake the fields from which they draw their livelihood. That is the miracle of flit; spring. What thov have already achieved in oblifcruling't'io havoc of war i.s second only to the healing of Nature. What was q 'brown desolation last' year is now ploughed land or green rank crass. Isolated graves arc, of course, untouched. But. these arc not very numeroiii in this war area. It was latterly always the rule to ln:ry our dea.i :n a graveyard specially set apart, with every grave registered. French tn'licinls may Inlk r.f presei'viu." the battlefield*. But the Frcno'.i ;ir«sniit does not talk or read muck. He is ii land worker. He returned lo his home as <|iiick!y as the Roche weal Wick in the autumn. "The war is finished." «-e aavi: ; "and ive must live." Craps will ripe:; this summer where-last year our men lay in trenches.. So wlipn fathers, mothers, and wives stand in Franco whero he stood, (hero i will be little, I fear, for (hem lo see of what their loved one saw. I am certain > that ho would havo it so. And is not the French peasant right?