Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1918. THE MARNE BATTLEFIELD.

Hokitika Guardian, 24 September 1918, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 1918. THE MARNE BATTLEFIELD.

Tub Marne battlefield of four years ago is very hallowed ground. History has on record already what- it signifies to the the human race. Writing of tile war in June, 1918, just at the. dawning after the dark days of April and May last, when tho great offensive by the enemy once again threatened the safety of Paris, a soldier of 1914 thus contemplated on the. past. He says: “It was only when places like Soissons, Villers-Cotterets and Chateau Thierry began recently to appear in tim war bulletins that one realised how far away is 19. Lt For if in September of that year, the Germans had come forward from the River Aisito towards Paris and the Marne once more some of us who were watching in France would have been filled with dismay. Yet in 1918, when So issues and -the Marne ,lu actually re-npnear in the communiques, we who would have felt dismay fuiii' years ago do not feel it now. For tho optimists and pessimists may talk as they please to suit the temperaments of the publics which pay them best, but tlie men who have seen most' of this war feo| it in tlicir bones that Roissons does not matter so much to-day because Germany, though very formidable still, is not what she was in 1914. and relatively ,is less formidable. For there is no denying it, after the Germans lost at the Manic their great chance of winning the war, they wi'it then so formidable that we who followed the combatants from the battleground northwards from Meaux, though a great weight had beep taken from our minds, know that at- any hour the. Germans might, react with what effect there was no prophesying. It was in those days that I realised —and all that has happened since, confirms me in my opinion—that the French are instinctively right in tlicir military knowledge ; they are civilised and intelligent people who have grown out oi the love of war, as children grow out of tho love :of playthings; but instinct makes the Frenchman at need the finest soldier in the world. When challenged lie goes hack to an hereditary knowledge which lie had put away ns of no further use to one who is adult and wise, and at once becomes a. champion to ho dreaded and admired. Like the British sailor whose knowledge of the sea is ns old as his tradition ot « thousand years, so the French soldier does not need military manuals; his dead from centuries of battlefields whisper to him. "After the Marne—where the German Army was soundly beaten and the German generals wore taught that there were those who were old at 4his sort of game before, the Prussians had emerged from tribal i ways—after the Marne, while I was j getting my first lessons in war, in following the troops, thinking the win I was going to end, T found the French I oven then industriously creating the i host of trenches from which I hal foolishly imagined Armageddon had passed for ever. It was my first warning of a long war: and this latest German attack towards Paris has now brought much of that- reserve defence, which T viewed with astonishment immediately after the Marne, into the battle-line again. The country over which the latest fighting has taken place is like Picardy, a region of broad rolling downs, but tho woods are larger and more frequent. Tho Forest of Compiegne for example, is of considerable extent. Nobody who travelled north from Meaux towards the Aiene after the battle of tho Marne is ever likelyto forget tho aspect of that country—none, that is, who was getting his first experience of war. There is a bvoad highway guarded by poplar trees, which rung from Yillers-Cottercts to Compiegne, a road ns direct as French logic. Down the road von Kluek’s armv or German right wing had moved sweeping all before it, leaving Paris a little to the south-east in contemptuous confidence that soon it would enter the French capital at its ease. The land was littered with the marks of nn army in retreat—the little British Expeditionary Force. There a battery had unlimbered and had blazed away at the German host till the guns were knocked out. In another place I remember seeing, with what feelings i cannot express, the place where a British rearguard had been ordered to hold up the enemy at all costs. They

had done it—but they never knew how well they had done, for they died doing it. For a couple of miles across tho trampled stubblo each man of a single line, three paces from his fellows had scooped enough earth hurriedly to give some shelter to his body. That place is hi s grave. But ho seemed to have mado tho need for plenty of other graves while he lasted, becauso lie did thoroughly well tho job which was entrusted to him; though, as I have said, nameless and forgotten as he is, lie never knew while doing it he was doing it so right that the victory on the. Marne was to follow. "And after that, between Crepv-eii-Valois and Betz and beyond, the tide of war came back, the German tide ebbing fast, von Kluek’s army thinking of Paris no more, hut of safety instead, and the beautiful countryside was littered with' abandoned guns, broken wheels, shattered cars, helmets, equipment, and" rifles, and bodies. Bodies everywhere—in the ditches, in the open and collected into barns. For the returning French peasants were collecting and then burying them, without discrimination of nationality, though they had bitter memories and the homos of monv had been destroyed.”