FRANCE RE-BORN.

Hokitika Guardian, 17 January 1922, Page 1

FRANCE RE-BORN.

YPRES AND THE SOMME. BELATED DIGGER RETURNS WITW NEWS OF BATTLE!'I ELDS. MADEMOISELLE FROM ARMENTIERES. WELLINGTON, Jan. 14. A French-Australian, who served throughput the war with the Australians, and remained in France till July last, returned b,v the Mamma, and spent the Christmas and New Year at Wellington, leaving again for Sydney by the Manuka yesterday from Auckland. The visitor, J ; ean HicrauU, who is a wine-grower in the .Murray \ alley, told an interesting story to a ” Tunes ” representative lr fore ho led!, o! umv the French ami Belgians have resumed their task of producirm and rcconslmotion, with filie sweat of their Iwows, the ingenuity oi their minds and Ike industry of their hands. HINDFNBURO LINK TO-DAY. Ho spent many months in the region of the Somme, where the lam-ms Him denburg line for over three \eu:s swayed supreme, and whore miliums ot men filled the country witii shells-holcs. destroyed every sign of vegetation, ruined .pvery road, and blocked up, every canal. “ To-day,” said M. flierault, “ with the war loss than four years behind us, you will find splendid motor roads everywli.c’ve, rivers, cleared and flowing as before, fields of grain, and other crops completely covering all traces of foui years of bloody war. Every acre, as far as one can travel, appears to be restored to farming, and the peasants arc harvesting their crops in the same care fui. painstaking way as in aiitp-bellun: days. Even in towns like Albert, Pennine and Bapaume, where New Zealanders and Australians spent the memorable winter of 101(5, and joined it tlm, big battles of H'! 7 and the retreat and advance of lfil?, an atmosphere ol revival is everywhere evident, alt-bong! the ruins still far outnumber the resfgved buildings. RESTORED, TO T|IE M AP.

- “ Bpiouuo was, as you all know, completely wiped oil the*uv.ip during the war, and at its elqse was simply a wrack of stones and brick- and rubble lo mark flip spot where mice stood a very prosperous town as big as firaaru. But in the summer of lb2l more than two tiiousand people were living and working in Pennine; new bridges spanned the Somme,' a new water system to take the place of the one the Gormans poisoned before their retreat in March, 1917, was in operation, stores were being laregly reconstructed and doing an active business,' many homes were” fully rebuilt and others rapidly nearing completion. The to an is iebbrn, nil cl is busy with the job of repioduring the wealth destroyed during the war.”

DEVELOPING NEW LANDS. The process that is under way in Northern France and South-western Belgium is analogous, said M. Hierault to that found in New Zealand and Australia, in their opening up and development by inroads of people from) older and more settled lands. Northern France was one of the richest assets of the country before 1 he war, but this asset was lost. “As I drove over the rolling hills, and entered Belgium passed through miles of waving grain in July last. In the distance I saw the new city of Ypres, with its cluster of new red-tiled roofs glistening in the afternoon sun. A NEW NAME FOR YPRES. “Ypres is now called Yprfes Re-bom. It is aptly named. Let me assure you here that there has grown up a wrong impression that Ypres was to lie left entirely! in its ruined state, as a memorial to the ravages of the Germans. This is not quite/ so', as thei only part of the city thus sot apart, and not to be restored is that part immediately in the environs of the Cloth Hall, the Cathedral, the Academic and the Convent—practically all that sector of the city bounded by the Rue de Lille and the Grande Place. They were just about as many people in Ypres before the war as in Wanganui; to-day something like five thousand people are now living, working, and producing. Dealers of all sorts "'are plying their trades , manufacturing is getting under way, hanks are doing business, and goods are entering and leaving the town very much as they did ten years ago, though, of course in much smaller volumo as yet. But every month more peoplo are returning to the town, more wheels are turning, and more wealth is being produced. No sun sets without some use beipg made of the creative forces of Nature in the fields, and setting the wheels of industry to work. It was the same in Reninghelst and Armen tie res. WHERE IS MADEMOISELLE. “No; T dtd not see Mademoiselle I from Armontiercs. You see, I am anticipating your queston. I spent a month looking round! Armentiores, but yon can tell the Diggers that she is not there —not yet, at least. Just as every old stockman in the Mona.ro claims to be the Man from Snowy River, so every pretty girl in Armentieres to-dav el aimto ho Mademoiselle. But not one of them that T saw is the Mademoiselle that'we first met in March, 1910 when we arrived in France. The little lndv that kept the combined eafe-estaminet-epicerie in Armenteres left when the town was filled with gas-just before Messines—and went back to Le Treport, below Abbeville, near the month of the Somme. Whether she ‘got through’ all right, Or married some colonial Digger, T wasn’t nljle to find out, but I can tell you her name is mentioned with the! greatest respect and reverence in Armentieres. LIFE IN STEENWERCK. The French-Anstralian grew thoughtful. “I suppose,” be said, “you will want to know about other mademoiselles. .Well, Marie-Jeanne is back in Steenvoorde, keeping a little cafe on

the ruins of the «ng Gejjnjaps, bomb; ed her out of. Madame is bapk a-t the. tCafe Anglais at W.hm %- I New Zealand Headquarters were. I Marthe and her sisters still keep the little! tea house on the. Bailleul road, outside Steenwerck. The two girls that kept the paper shop near I’Eglise, Pauline and her pretty sister Yvonne, who attended every soldiers’ funeral, are back, with their mother. New Zealanders knew Steenwerck well, that is why I tell you so much about it. Madame( is once, more at the Boucheri e ■ with her daughter, Katie, is it? and ■ her blind son, who composed the Diggers’ song, “We. Haven’t Seen the Kaiser for a H—l of a Time.” FROM NEW SCENES TO OLD. Hierault, who was a private of Jacka’s battalion, said he was proud of his title, “Simple Soldat, depuis debut jusqu’a la fin de la guerre,” as he called it. Probably the last of the Dominion’s soldiers to leave the battlefields area, he conus hack with his me-mories—-of old Cairo, the battles of the ' Wazza, Lone Pine, the Somme and the Lvs, Horseferry road, and the Regent ' Palace; back from tbe shellbursts and the gas, the horror of moonlight with its bombing ’planes, to his little vinc- • yard in Southern Riverina, where the ' Murray flows westward cm its two-thou- ■ S andi mile journey from Kosciusko to jthei^ea.