A TOUR IN DEVASTATED FRANCE.

Hokitika Guardian, 5 April 1921, Page 1

A TOUR IN DEVASTATED FRANCE.

IV -THE IRR DP ARABLES

By Sir William Beach Thomas. Albert and Petronne. . v The system of rectonstruction in France is to repair the houses classified as “reparable” before rebuilding the condemned houses. It follows that to be reckoned among the reparable* is an eager ambition, in towns and especially in villages where such exist as in Verdun, Arras, Beth une, Rlieims. But there are many towns wholly without any shelter that even a French houseowner would describe as reparable. The worst of all is perhaps Lens, where, however, two coal shafts are at work. Bailletil, Bapaume, and Albert—to quote only those I visited —are others that boast not so much as a dog kennel.

All have a considerable population, nevertheless.

At Albert Birmingham’s godchild, you will find close under the bids where the mayor and his staff "'or 'with splendid energy, a tradesman's house neatly if strangely composed of brick and glass and wood. The man, who had never before handled a brick, built it himself at the urgent wish of his wife.

“You see, she was homo-sick,’’ he said.

* * * * *

How often did [ hear that word ’nostalgic', the French for home sickness., Lt is only less common than sinistres, a now technical word for those wh. have suffered “sinister” things in the loss of house and property. Throughout the war till March 1918, this woman would not lease her house, preferring shells to exile. She was there mi July Ist., 191(5, gave everything she had to English wounded and lived for the next 18 minths in her cellar. The son of a British minister, she said, died at her door, and she told the story with a passionate hut restrained pity I never heard equalled.

The two showed me over their new bungalow house with pride, talking all the whole of the war, almost as if it were then raging. “They would hardly let me go without some gift. “Would 1 not at least taken away a chicken as a sign of her admiration for the English Neither she nor her '"shawl had so inwh as heard that Albert had been “adopted.”

You see clearly in Albert, and yet more clearly in Perm: tie, where every house was blown in, yet only half-des-troyed by deliberate mines, that clearing is a bigger business than building. The famous Virgin, from the ton of the Albert Cathedral, is still unarm vated from the masses of masonry. On the other hand, a fine new factory L already built on a clear spot. The capacious cellars, which saved so many French lives and still house some inhabitants, are themselves an unexpected bar lo rapid reconstruction. You can only clear out the rubble by throwing up tlie stones one by one, or at lies' lifting them laboriously in bucketfuls.

At places like Louvain the Germans did the clearing up. AT Pennine they achieved tlie maximum of eneutnberanoo; and it is reckoned that the clear ing of the’ sites of the bigger Pennine houses means two more years of hard continuous work before rebuilding can he so much as attempted.- Yet if you can find tlie way into the house or hotel you will lunch profusely for a small sum while your chair rooks oil the rough flooring botched up to cover the ruin below. It is no wonder that the commoner' word of all in North France —and wonts tell much is ‘deblayer’, to clear up. Everyone everywhere is clearing up something; bodies, bones, shells, brickbats, dust, tree trunks, beams, wire, weeds, and other rubbish and rn l : ■’ infinite, of indescribable variety- the debris of Armageddon in. the trail of the Beast.

(To be continued.)

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