DEVASTATION OF FRANCE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1722, 7 June 1917, Page 4

DEVASTATION OF FRANCE.

RUINED COUNTRYSIDE DESTRUCTION OF FRUIT TREES. A visit to the portion of France which was devastated during the German retreat was made by a party of members of the British and Italian Parliaments for the purpose of informing opinion in the allied countries. The impression made on them was summarised by Mr H. J. Mackinder, M.P. for Camlachie division of Glasgow, in a letter to the London Times. Mr Mackinder remarked that he limited himself to facts which he saw with his own eyes or of which he heard from reliable witnesses. From the little town of Ham, a place of 3,000 or 4,000 inhabitants, exactly one month before the evacuation, 700 men and women, between (he ages of 15 and 00, were suddenly removed to an unknown destination, and nothing has been heard of them since, except in the case of one woman. Two sick persons, who were practically dying, were included in the number, because their ages fell within (he limits stated. Today the remnant of the people of Hiim are a pathetic little crowd of grandparents and school children. This case appears to be typical of what has happened in a considerable number of villages and small towns of the departments of the Somme,'the Aisne, and the Oise, TENS OF THOUSANDS OF TREES. ‘‘Next in point of wickedness, in my estimation,” Mr Mackinder continues, “stands the cutting down of fruit trees. In order to appreciate what has been done in this matter it must be realised (hat this is one of the richest fruit districts even in fruit-growing France. Not merely were there many orchards, and fruit trees along the roads, but practically every held in the country-side was studded with line trees, from 20 to 100 years old—apples, pears, and cherries. They stood over all the landscape with the regularity of chessmen on a chess board, A French Deputy, a Norman, who was with us, estimated the average value of each tree at 200 fanes, and the average yield per annum at 20 francs. After careful consideration on the spot, I write with due caution when I say that tens of thousands of these trees June been felled. When you look from a hill top they lie across the tields ranged in ranks like men lying in extended order, not a branch having been lopped away, and each stum]) having a white, newly-cut top to it. In some communes a few trees remain standing, but even of those whole groups have rings neatly chipped round them so that they will die. “At Coucy-le-Chateau there stood the massive remains of a round tower, the keep of a Medieval castle. This untenanted ruin was one of the most remarkable monuments of its kind in France, and, indeed, in Europe. I saw it myself only a few months before the war. It now exists no longer. The destruction of it is so complete that the remains are not in great fragments, as is usually the case when masonry of this kind is broken up, but have been reduced to their component stones, which now lie in an immense shapeless heap. There is no military excuse for this crime {(gainst history, for the tower added nothing to the military value of the hill on which it was placed.” HOUSES • SYSTEMATICALLY WRECKED. In the district visited the destruction had been carried far beyond the point of military necessity. “At Chauny every single house, except in one suburb, has been destroyed by explosion from the cellar. Outside each ruined"doorway there is chalked up on the wall what was apparently an order as to the quantity and kind of explosive which was to be put within. At Jussy there was even greater thoroughness, for whereas at Chauny the unroofed and ruined church and, houses still stand, and make a tragic appeal to the imagination, Jussy has been literally razed to the ground. It was a well-to-do little market town, of some two or three thousand inhabitants, almost every house of it with a cellar, a little front garden, and an iron gateway and palings. To-day only one cellar in the whole place remains intact, and the Germans were not content with an explosion in each house, but took the trouble to pull down the ruined walls, so that now Jussy is like the spoil heap of a mine, with a rough surface of brok-