Traces of the Hun.

Levin Daily Chronicle, 4 October 1917, Page 1

Traces of the Hun.

EFFACED BY FRENCH. (From C. E. W. Bean, Correspondent with the Australian Imperial Force.) Copyright by the Crown. BRITISH HEADQUARTERS. FRANCE, June 1. The French have taken a remarkable interest in .Australian and New Zealand troops since thev came to France. French and Russian correspondents have constantly visited the front held by the Anzac Corps. And when the French Government recently invited the Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and South African correspondents to visit the French front, the offer was eagerly accepted as giving us an opportunity of knowing at iirst hand something about the French, for in all this tiresome war, if there is one subject upon which every Australian officer has agreed, and indeed every man in the British armies in France, it is their whole-hearted admiration for the manner in which the French Army and people have faced the war. NO DOUBT ABOUT FRENCH.

Whatever discussions there may over be round the camp fires as to whether this or that army or people have pulled their full weight in the straggle, there is one people as to whom there is not and never will bo any doubt —and that is the French. For two years while the British Empire was getting under way the French sustained numerous losses in holding at bay the great, mass of the German power in the west. At the end of it tlicy took the offensive on the Somme when the Germans admit that they thought the French offensive power was ended; and they have managed to comb out of their thinned numbers a sufficient reserve to make two further heavy offensives in the present year.

Last week, four of us —Canadian, New Zealand, South African and Australian correspondents —were allowed to see some of the country in which the French have been fighting the Germans who invaded their land.

The first thing that hits you in this French area of .war —the first obvious ccrinin impression—is that none of the rest of us, however hard and willing the fight—have a knowledge of war —the real thing, in the same way as the people of the invaded countries have. We others can argue about the right and wrong of war; but there was no argument with the French. They were not asked if the)' wanted war. The German came in and left them to buy him out of their country or fight him. Now, after nearly three years, when they have fought him out of great strctches of if, the German leaves it to them with their fruit trees ring-barked, their houses blown down, with gun cotton in charges under the corners, their young girls and women up to middle age carried off, and the children whom Germans have bred during their occupation hurried off into Germany to be brought up in Heaven knows what state of orphanage to make the German recruit classes for 19351f)36.

BITTERNESS TOWARDS BRITISH. The French are noticeably more bit

t'.'r tliiiu the British. It is not uncommon to see the villagers shake thpir fists at the "dirty Germans," as they call thorn, when German prisoners are marched down the struct, and ask why prisoners should be taken at all. One has known a French woman to bccome white and quivering with rage at the mere presence of a newly captured German behind the sentry in the open door of the guardroom. It is curious that the Germans are far more bitter against the British than the French. In going through villages in which the Germans before their retirement had beci facing the French, we saw painted up in large letters on the houses beside the street, "Gott strafe England." The French had blacked one ot' these notices completely out.

In the villages and cities which the Germans evacuated or were expelled from in March and April tlii3 year, the French have careful!}' wiped out or torn down every trace of them. Three months ago Noyon was full of a busy population of German soldiers and staff officers, and must have swarmed wit?) notices, "It is forbidden to ritle in this place," "It is forbidden to walk here," and been plastered with proclamations as Bapaumc was, demanding the handing over of all metals at a fixed price to be paid in German bonds. It is hard to find a single trace of the Gorman in Noyon to-day. Ilis proclamations have been carefully removed from the walls or covered with French ones; his signboards have been painted out; even the names of his soldiers scrawled in pcncil •jver street walls have been scratched oil' by shaving the surface of the stone until the last letter has been removed. FAMILY GEAVES DESECRAT3D.

The Germans build solid stone memorials to their regiments, and in some places—for example, in Bapaume—they have had the dcccncy or wisdom to leave the cemeteries alone. When the Germans retired early in the spring, the French soldiers rcspected these big Gorman memorials until tlicy came across some of the French monuments shattered and the graves opened and apparently robbed either for the lead in the coffins or for private pillage. At the chateau of Mont Renaud the owner was carried elf into Germany as hostage, and the coffins in his family graveyard wiore broken open. It only needed a little of this sort, of thing to raise the temper of the French troops whenever they came across some pompous Prussian nionuimn! erccted in their countrv.

The Germans seem to have treated French cemeteries and shrines as their individual fancy seized them. Often they left them untouched. The graves of German soldiers are found in most French cemeteries or in neat well-kept cemeteries beside them. Unless the Germans thought th.-y were going to be in France for ever, ordinary prudence should have made them preserve the French cemeteries as well as their own. And yet we are told cf places where the hedges of trees had been cut down or dug up from the French cemetery anil planted round the German, or French tombstones taken to make a German regimental monument.