ARRAS.

Hokitika Guardian, 4 April 1921, Page 4

ARRAS.

ITS WONDER-WOMAN AND ITS

WONUKKS

Bv Sir William Peach Thomas

On the Arras-Cambnii road lives in solitary toil one of the great characters oi the war. the grey-haired poetess ol Anas, her only companions a big dog and a- cheerful parrot.

She inhabited a line chateau of which nothing at all is visible except an oblong of repaired brick, some 16 feet b> 12 feet, over which the State workmen have thrown a semi-circular roof of corrugated iron, and fixed a- door at one end and a window at the other. A kennel and a tiny chicken house have since been added.

This delicate and cultured lady has dug herself out a little garden, and laboriously saved some few household goods from the deep and capacious cellars. Figureheads and hits of line carving art' heaped together in the li\j„g room along with garden stuff, sacks and the preserved skin ol Imr lust horse, which was killed in Arrass.

She is writing a great poem on the British soldiers who “appeared like the sun” and as she refused to leave Arrass even during the worst bombardments, so now she cannot be induced to be siled from the site of her chateau. She has a large correspondence with Bi it is! i friends, and maintains a cheerful courage such as I never saw equalled.

She lost everything husband, house, money, comfort-. One may say that her neighbourhood too, has clean gone, ineluding cultivated fields, trees and other houses; hut this more than Joblike succession of afflictions lias not abated one atom of her vivacious zest. Such women have made France invincible before and will again.

It is lonely on the Arras road, much of the battlefield is still wired and trenched, though on the west side is a neat and spacious State nursery garden. compact of flourishing fruit trees.

When you i-ome to the station, line and liew, v. itli gangs ol labourers along tlie peimaiient way, life hums. Workmen, commercial agents ami G r., "llers, visito.s. old inliahzitants, and some r>'fi gees, as they are still called, make populous every street and sqttaie.

]t is a round marvel that the population of Arras to-day is bigger than it was before the war, though almost every house lost as least fragments and very few were left- habitable as to a single room. As at Verdun, all old Arras people with money in their pockets have set to work rebuilding; and though many live in desperate conditions, they are milkin'* tbo best «>l' things with most inspiring pluck. Yet your heart bleeds for Arras. In the lovely old Spanish square I seemed to he hack in 1914, when General Retain himself sent me in his ear to see the ruin of the first 500 shells that the day before had picked out all the loveliest spots with insensate accuracy, and brayed and hashed them to morsels. Even still remain untold tons of rubble of brick and stone, at which the old French workmen, with their long shovels are shovelling patiently, each pair removing—-one of them proudly said —2O cubic yards a- day.

In the Petit Place or by the tallow factory - that was on fire on that October day in 1914 you might think. “. . .There was no sign of Home

From parapet to basement.”

Yet in the new and fine-fronted houses, in the botched and patched houses, in the cellars, in the Government huts, over 50,000 people live, and emerge to work and shop and visit- and sen the kinema.

The misery of bodily discomfort is great. A cellar and a rubbish heap do not spell luxury; and the quickest work seems slow. Money is short and building costs just five times more than before the war; hut the people have the share of Hie spirit of the lonely poetess; and that 50,000 people ghquid he in Arras at all, much uipre

that tlioy should be living a brisk social life, is a triumphant example of the command: “lie indomitable. How the Hermans shelled the station square, div in, day out for lour years, and pounded railway and bridge! Today the station is spacious, trains are , many and good, and the platforms pack ed. „„