VISIT TO BATTLEFIELDS

Hokitika Guardian, 21 September 1920, Page 3

VISIT TO BATTLEFIELDS

SIR JAMES ALLEN’S IMPRESSIONS.' LONDON, July 27. The healing band of Time has already softened the scarred battlefields. of France and Belgium. Vimy Ridge, Passchendnele, the devastated areas round Ypres, and the regions of the Somme are now covered with a luxuriant growth of grass and weeds; in the great shell-holes that remairf the bull rushes have, found a habitation, and the? blood-red poppieb bloom in rich profusion'. Sir James Allen, who has returned from:.,a tour of the battlefields which he made in the Company of General Sir Fabian Ware, head of.the Imperial War Graves Commission, tells how they motored through miles of the old battle fiekj areas now rich in ripening cropß of \yheat alid oats and grain. Even in the Ypres salient he saw patches of corn. On Vimy Ridge a party of engineers were exploding shells. He caught a glimpse of the terrors of the past, and then, in contrast, from the self-same shelter which the officer who accompanied him had once used as headquarters, now thickly overgrown-with grass and flowers, they were able to gather a plentiful supply of bilberries, which flourished there. In the lower parts of the battle areas of France extensive restoration work is going on, and in a; year or two there will be no trace of the desolation of war, save for the cemeteries of tjbose who fell. Even in the more devastated areas around Ypres and in the Somme this softening process is going on. The shell-holes are being, filled in, or are levelling'up of their own accord, and these .will disappear in time. “Of course, there are the shattered towns and villages,” said Sir James, “but even these will gradually disappear. I saw groups of tanks still lyilior w here they were put out of action, and round Ypres I saw the pill-boxes which will probably remain as a lasting 'memorial. In a cemetery at Passchendaele there is a pill-box at each of two corners, and one in the middle,-around which the graves are grouped.”