TRAIL OF THE HUN

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 262, 1 August 1919, Page 8

TRAIL OF THE HUN

DEVASTATION AT NOYON

A CURE FOR PACIFISTS

__, .("Morning Poet's" Correspondent.) .i 5 ..,,, :., ...,'.. Paris, June 5. ■ ' r ijacjfists, ought to be compelled to,,take thg;.oure; at Noyon.- Those suffering ffoni the plague of catchwords which infest the Peace Conference might find in. the. .old, G-allic city another Lourdes, which, might rid them of all troubles. Only it is hard to get certain people to visit such places as Noyon, almost as hard as it was to prevail upoj TVar Lord of Syria, to bathe it the waters of Jordan. It is unfortunate because a practically certain cure could be guaranteed. Arras, Ypres, .Verdun are associated with great battles; aruLdst these ruins the German could shrug his shoulders and say, "It is a pity, but it is war." Compiegne was once the French General Ifeidquarters, and there is, therefore, some justification, for the havoc- wrought by the nightly Bhowcr of German bombs! even for that long ruined street in Senlis there might be found some faint excuse in a soldiery new to war and maddened .by fear. But Noyon is a beautiful city shamelessly jir.d systematically destroyed; no justification, military or otherwise, can be found for this ruthless act of a beaten foe; it would be impossible for even Mr. Ramsay Macdonnld, after a brief hour spent amidst its blackened , portals, ever again to love the Hun as a brother. Noyon had a cathedral, one of the jrlories of France. Little wonder that Robert Louis Stevenson once expressed a desire to be Bishop of Noyon. -The cathedral oan be restored—at a price, but Monseigneur Lagneau ' (Stevenson really could not have become Bishop of Noyon; for the Bishopric disappearedwith the Concordat and is now merged in that of Beauvais) told mo it is going to be done. Tt is really the doyen of French Gothic' , ' cathedral, the perfect monument of that transition period between Romanesque and Gothic , . Even, now it" is lovely iin its niins; its beauty rise.-s, proWIne amidst all this desolation. ' For the Hun did his work well. After he retired last year he fired over six hundred heavy shells alone on the city, and the cathedral ?ot its share. Even before .he left he had begun his work. Monseigneur Lagneau'himself told mo that some of ■his parishioners took refuge in the cathedral during the excitement caused by ■.the enemy's departure and that they saw the Huns deliberately set fire to the organ'and then to the roof. ■ A temporary covering of corrugated iron—a hideous glistening thing—affords tion to the "bare, ruined choirs." AH around is crumbling masonery and "broken 6tatuary. Attetppts were made to bold sen-ices in-the'nave, 'but no congrega- , tion, however determined, could worship In such circumstance?, Mniw-ignrur La»Tiea-n, however, has succeeded] in improvising the beautiful Salle Capitularre, and there the faithful of Noyon daily assemble. ' Vandalism Without Excuse.

■ -The. city itself , is completely ruined. The delightful Hotel de • villo is now a mass of battered ruins ■■ and shattered ■ masonry;, its fine Kenaissance. ■ facade, however, still stands. The place where' ("iharlemagne was born, where Hugues Capet was crowned in 987, has suffered -the full blast of the Hun's rage.' And, as Jlonseigneu.r L'agn.?au insisted, there was not the slightest justification for this vandalism... General Humbert's army did not reach Noyon until the town had been.marked. Indeed, .-s the General told- -Monseignenr, it, would have been 'dangerous.for troops to have entered the town,-as some engineers reported that the. jGermans had nlaced six large retarded 'mines in the streets. The Germans destroyed Noyon because they had been beaten in the field; it is one of the worf.t outrages of- the war. .: The people of • Noyon, however, love their ruins., Out of a population of about 6even thousand, two thousand have returned. Some of them Ret permission to , return for a day's visit;, but,, -they-., cannot tear themselves away from those shattered houses and silent streets, and so they camp in ■.. this wilderness of stone. Some earn a ' living by working under the orders of the. municipality at sweeping up the .ruins, others are engaged in the Countryside filling up shell holes and trenches. All are. content and amazingly healthy— •when one considers that there is no ■water in the town and that the sanitary condition are appalling. "We have three doctors and two in Noyon," • said. Jfonseigneur with a twinkle in his oy.e, "bnt our people will not die!" They _jiye, of'course, under every possible inconveniences, though the food supply is .Terfiarkably good. The great trouble 13 furniture. Monseijneuv, after much ..difficulty,- 'succeeded in getting a number of chairs for his services in the Salle Capi.tulaire. They disappear every now and .then; and he sometimes finds them 'n ■the'-Bare apartments of some of tho faithful. ~"God,'"he says to the abashed pur•loinere, "does not object to your borTowing His -chairs for a little, but I believe He really wants them for tomorrow's Mass," And the chairs are there the next morning. ■All the villages around Noyon are .Tiiined, but not deserted. Life returns to these poor shelters with the persist-ence-and hope of spring. The little vil- . lage churches—Norman pillars and Renaissance ornamentation—have pavticularly suffered. Fruit-tree stumps, battered, churches, that is the tale of the Noyon countryside. More than one cure told me with tears in his eyes of the wanton destruction of his church, and of the effort? being made to secure some ■- little corner where the villagers can worship, protected from wind and rain. It is hard to find such corners. Weeds grow on the interior ■ pillars, and the swallow and sparrow of the Psalmist can. build their nests on these broken altars.