BATTLE TOWNS REBORN

Hokitika Guardian, 11 January 1929, Page 8

BATTLE TOWNS REBORN

BUSY ALBERT: BEAI'TY IX PEROXXE AND A MODEL MIXING CITY AT LENS.

(By J. 11. X. Jewries, a record of a trip along the British front—the wonderful revival and change achieved in the ten years since the war ended in the principal battle towns of France and Flanders).

LILLE. Xov. 13. Tile passage of tea years since the war came to an end has had an effect upon the zone of the battlefields not oasilly to ,be ;re*ilisod. Those who fought there will have read, indeed, of tin; reconstruction of the devastated ireas. hut it is difficult to see how they can imagine, the present condition of a countryside which, when they knew t. looked as if if could never come hack to ho town or village or field aga in. But that inconceivable change lias come. There is the gable of a viTfa—i tanner’s house, perhaps, but in characteristic French villa .style-looking over the edge of Mamctz Wood, which has grown into a sizeable spinney, and yesterday I stopped to admire the glow of autumn tints upon Vimy Ridge. Mametz and Vimy and so many other great disembodied names have taken Arm again: in the Somme district only Thiepval 1 was told, must be reckoned IS lost. THE NEW ALBERT. The most striking changes, however, have come to the towns which so many British soldiers knew in total or in partial ruin. They would not too easily recognise Albert to-day. Albert is .rowing back to prosperity, a railway lepot. a town of regular streets and .vcl.'-stocked shops. Tile basilica is rising again, a replica if its pre-war self. The outer shell is •omplotod. the sanctuary is again rich v.-.i shining gold mosaics, and workmen are now engaged upon the very mmmit of the great tower, where the •enowned statue of the Blessed Virgin, which hung so long aslant, till its fall bidicated the approaching end of war. is once more to be placed. Albert’s chief relic of the war renaining is tlio town hall, which is till an army shed upon the wide Place Faidherbe. where so many roads tc nid from the front crossed. There are verv fine 'schools built on one side of

...,s square now. Those who recall the crocked monument here to the men oi Albert who fought in the Franeo-Prus-ian war will be interested to learn .hat it has been set up again, all brek:i and gashed by sho’l lire as it is. ipon its old pedestal within a neat, sow railing-bordered plot. Only so inicli new work lias been inserted as viil enable the monument to stsVnd itli safety. Not alone in Albert, blit elsewhere, too. monuments of 1870 are being rc'rectod with their wounds. WHITE TOWER OF PERONNE. There is a proud device, which they bring to mind, upon a shop in the re•onstrueted main square of Peronne. ‘Founded 1702. Destroyed 1870 and •016. Rebuilt 1873 and 19:2-1.” reads the inscription and contrasts with the Imp’s ephemeral stock in trade which '•onsists of suits and overcoats upon those odd wax figures of messieurs tre.s•legaiits which are the delight o: French outfitters. Generally speaking, of all the towns of the front which I saw when passing through. Peronne is the pheonix. It lias '•isen from its ashes with greatest dignity, even with some beauty. The town hall lias boon remade round '.he charming portal on the side-street which escaped injury, in perfect reproduction of its former self, statues in tidies and all. The banks and many of the business premises which adore the Marche anx erbes are satisfactorily built, hut it is e lovely new old Gothic church which till Ik; the glory of Peronne. Its ibnost oval white tower shows already 'ike a linger of light, over the downs of the Somme. .The ancient church is Icing remade with as much of its battered self as can he used. A splendid mediaeval gate is Doing rebuilt, too, in 'wick, so that, at Peronne to-day you have something of the sensation of the people of olden days when mediaeval cork was new. Bapuamo itself shows rather more of lie war. I thought, than Albert and iVronne. This is because its centre is • till a litLle unkempt. But it has i nicely-built hotel, the Sheffield, and is now a busy little town. Arras, almost certainly, will be the town, or city rather of the war. The vast cathedral, four-filths of it. is still a riddled and bird-lm,unled ruin. With quite persistence and excellent art Mvonty-five workmen are engaged on the restoration of the north transept frontage. THE EXGLIMI LOOK. The houses which were destroyed in the beautiful Spanish square have not been rebuilt yet. cither. One frontage. Use House of the .angel, Xo. Ti, is m-opped uji with beams which themselves are now blackened with time. On the outskirts of Arras, the large factory on the banks of the Searjie and the flourmill-houses have been built on the outskirts of the city, however. The surmndings of Do is and Lens v.ould seem, to those who fought there. | miraculoudy changed. A great mining model-city covers the scene of hitler and bloody battles; street upon streel or red brick neat dwellings. with Mi.lies of half-timber, so that the v.hole has a semi-English look, as is perhaps not unbefitting. Lens has a most astonishing settled air; it is all lull impossible to believe Hull the huge central square of the town is an erection ol the last few years only. Any suggestion bi war lias gone irom here for ever.