WHAT IS LEFT OF BELGIUM.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLV, Issue 3989, 23 July 1915, Page 2

WHAT IS LEFT OF BELGIUM.

AND THE PEOPLE’S FAITH IN BRITAIN.

HEADQUARTERS OF THE BRITISH- ARMY. (By AVilliam G. Shepherd, correspondent of the United Press of Amo- • rica with General French.) Northern France, I’ve spent part of two days in what’s left of Belgium, and I find that th-> dream of tho Belgians is to see. their King ride hack into Brussels. AJ.or and women, boys and girls, merchants and farmers talk and plan and have visions of tho time when the “King comes home.” Tho Belgians tliat I have seen live in the midst of ‘British troops, and their confidence in General French’s army is unlimited. Their confidence is so great that they seem to t-hink that the English Tommies can even steer the German shells away Horn their villages, and they continue Jiving in their homes, under daily shell fire, supremely satisfied that the English Army will take care of them, waiting the time when living Albertrides back into Brussels. Next to the English, tho Belgians adore Americans.- They know that only a few miles distant from them are millions of Belgians who would bo starving if it were not for the j American Belgian Relief Commission, i The aeroplane men can fly in a minute ! from King Albert’s Belgium to that poverty-stricken Belgium which the Germans hold. . GERMANY'S GRAVE. “You’re an American ? Aou re an American?” saul an old woman t-o me, with smiles of delight. “You’re the first America:: I’ve seen since the war. I used to think Americans were just like other people. I’ve got your flag here in my back room.” If it were not for a near-by bill, this old Belgian lady’s shop would have been riddled with rifle bulets and blown up by German shells long ago. The German trenches are not half a mile from lier. Heavy English guns near by boomed many times as we talked, and German shells shrieked over the sheltering bill and over us and struck near the village a mile behind us.

Across the road from Madame D ’s little cross-roads country store is a farmhouse. 1 went over there for a glass of milk. Four children crowded around the Belgian woman as she talked to me. “I take care of tiie farm myself,” she said. “The children help me, but they are very little, are they not? They) like better to take care of A 1 poster O’Reilly’s grave out in the yard. They farm the flowers on it.”

“May I see Air O’Reilly’s grave? I asked.

“But certainly, Alonsieur. Come with me.”

We trooped through the little house to tho back door, and there, in the midst of the black ploughed land, was a huge mound of yellow wood flowers. In the midst of them stood a shining silvered glass vase and iu the vase were fresh white flowers. The children ran up to the grave, and the oldest hoy stooped down and picked a dandelion flower out of the narrow rim of green grass which bordered the mound. ‘‘Private Patrick O’Reilly, Dublin Fusiliers. Killed in action,” read the lettering on tho white wooden cross. A RARE VANTAGE POINT. It was later in the afternoon trait I climbed the hill with an English officer. From a hiding place in its brow we could look down on two sand-colored streaks that ran through the great valley. They were the English and the German trenches. The rifle tiring was scattered, but constant. There are few places on tin's long line of trenches across Western Europe where it is possible to see both trenches at the same time, buttles was olio of those rare vantage points.

Before us was a battered town; the sunlight shone on its broken walls. You could have walked to it in fifteen minutes, except for the fact that the space between was a battlefield, full of death.

“Ihe Germans are in tliat town,’ said the officer.

“That town” was in that other Belgium, ravished and devastated, where Belgian folk as kindly and industrious as Aladame 1) , or the little farm family that loved Patrick O'Reilly so well, have been turned into hungry baggers of the world. Iu the distance an aeroplane soared, and we watched one of the frequent attacks by German anti-aircraft guns. The shrapnel broke in great white puffs about the machine, each puff centred by a flash of lire —twelvepound, three-inch shells breaking in the sky. The aeroplane came towards us. GOT THE BEST OF IT.

An indescribable din of rifle fire rose from tho ■Gorman trenches. All of my curiosity as to .how an infantry battle would sound was satisfied. Then there came the “"hammer, hammer, hammer,” of machine guns, turned into the sky. They sounded like riveting machines on skyscrapers. Soon tho aeroplane .had passed out of range and the firing ceased. 2fo bullets, so far as we know, came near us. Wc climbed down the bill again, as night was falling and wo could no longer pick out objects at a distance. A soldier came hurrying along the road in front of Madame I> ’s store. “A German shrapnel broke in our trench and a dozen men are dead or wounded. I’m going for help,” Jio explained, as he hurried on. • ‘But three of our shrapnel broke in their trenches along here to-day,” explained a soldier. “We’ve got the best of it.” A ten-minute run took us out of the shell range, and, within another few moments wo were but. of Belgium and in France.