Senlis-The Immortal

Hokitika Guardian, 2 May 1921, Page 1

Senlis-The Immortal

Senlis is an ancient city that lies 27 miles north west of Paris. It was the ancient home of the French kings, who for nearly a thousand years had their residence there. For ages it was the chief rampart in the fortress of Western civilisation against the barbarism that poured out of the East and North East. 11 was here that the German hordes in 1914 halted before Von Kluck “shifted towards their doom” by a. sudden change of direction that took them towards Meaux to utter disaster on the glorious but gory fields of Valois, Oureq and Marne.

It was within its walls that Marshal Foch’s H.Q. received the German wireloss on November Bth asking for an armistice—the armistice that was to end in the utter downfall of the Empire of Blood and Iron that was found od by a lie and built on brutality. Once one of the richest towns of Franco, Senlis is to-day .utterly ruined - it spent tho last of its resources nursing French, English and American soldiers, thousands of whom sleep for ever in tho three great cemeteries—veritable Fields of the Dead, scattered round the immortal city. 6ne sixth of its buildings wore burned hv tho Huns; the rest looted, defiled and damaged. Tts cathedral was shelled, and its Mayor an many of its innocent citizens foully murdered by tho TTuns in 1914. Hail to the Heroic I