THE GRAND TRAGEDY OF THE RETREAT.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 288, 29 June 1917, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE GRAND TRAGEDY OF THE RETREAT.

By PHILIP GIBBS.

War Correspondents' Headquarters, France, March 31. TN this despatch I am moved to write -*■ of the old men aryl women and of the young women and children who have been liberated by our advance.

I am moved because day ,by day I have been visiting the places that (were once their homes and are now the rubbish heaps which lie about that great 6tretch of country laid waste by the enemy in the wake of his retreat, where there is only silence and black ruin; because, also, I have jurt been among these people, seeing their te.ars, liearing their pitiful teles, touched by hands which plucked my sleeve so that I should listen to another story of outrage and misery. All they told me, a'nd all I have seen, builds up into a great tragedy. These young girls, who wept before me, shaken by the terror of their remembrance, the»e old, brave men, who cried like children, these old women who did not weep but spoke with strange smiling eyes as to lire's g'eat ironies, revealed to me in a fuller way the enormous _,gony of life behind the German lines, .low shifted back a little so that these people have escaped GERMANS "HORRIBLY AFRAID." It is an agony which moludes the German soldiers, themselves enslaved, wretched, disillusionised men, under the great doom which has killed so many of their brothers, ordered to do the things many of them loathe to do, brutal by order even when they have gentle instincts, doing kind things by stealth. afraid of punishment for charity, stricken both by fear and hunger. "Why do you go?" they were asked by one of the women who have been speaking to me. ".Because we hope to e cape the new British attacks,'' they answered. "The English gun-fire smashed us to death on the Somme. The officers know we cannot stand that horror a second! time." They spoke of men horribly afraid. Of their hunger seemed to l.vno doubt. They begged food of these civilians, who would have starved to death but for the American relief supplies. They killed cats and dog-s to provide themselves with a taste of meat which otherwise they do not taste. This, although the German kommandantur seized all the cattle and foodstuffs of the French inhabitants, and registered all their hens and took the eggs the hens had laid. PLUNDER AND SLAVERY. "I was the bailiff of Mme. la Marquise de Caulincourt," said an elderly man, taking off his peaked cap to show me a coronet on the badge. " When the Germans came first to our village they seized all the tools, and all the farmcarts, and all the harvestng, and then they forced us all to work for them, the men at 3 sous an hour, the women at 2 sous an hour, and prison for any who refused to work. "From the chateau they sent back the tapestries, the pictures, and anything which pleased this commandant or that, until there wa n nothing left. Then in the last days they burnt the chateau to the ground and all the village and all the orchards." "It was the same always/'' said a woman. "There were processions of ■carts covered with linen, and underneath the linen was the furniture stolen from good houses." HOW THE CLOUDS LIFTED. " Fourteen days ago," said an old man who had tears in his eyes as he upoke, " I passed the night in the cemetery of Yraignes. There were 1015 of us people from neighbouring villages, some in the church and some in the cemetery. They searched us there and took all our money. Some of the women were stripped and searched.

" In the cemetery it was a. cold night and dark, but all around the sky was Homing with the fire of our villages— Poeuiiy, Bouvincourt, Marteville, Trefcon, Monehy, Bernes, Harrourt, and many more. The people with me iwept and cried out loud to see their dear places burning, and all this-hell. Terrible explosions came to our ears'. There were mines everywhere under the roads. Then Yraignes was set on fire and burnt around us, and we wero stricken (with a great terror. ''Next day the English came when the last Uhlans had left. 'The English !' we shouted, and ran forward to meet them, stumbling with outstretched hands. Soon shells began to fall in Vraigne.s. The enemy was firing upon us and some of the shelU fell very eloso to a larn quite full of women and children. 'Come awav' said your English soldiers, and we fled farther." A BRAVE FRENCHWOMAN. Russian prisoners were brought to work behind the lines, and some French prisoner.'. They were so badly fed that they were too weak to wrtlk. "Poor devils!" said a young Frenchwoman. "It made my heart ache to see them." She watched a French prisoner one day, through her window. He wa>s so faint that he staggered and dropped his pick. A German sentry knocked him down with a violent blow on the ear. The young Frenchwoman opened the window, and the blood rushed to her hand "Sale bete !" she cried to the German *, sentry. Hpspoke French and understood, and came under the iv indow. "Sale bete'? . . . For those words you shall <:o to prison, madame." She repeated the words," and called him ;> monster, and at la, t the man spoke in a shamed way and sr>id:~ "Que vonloz vous? C'eit la guerre. (Vest eruelK li gu,;rro!" Tlii] man had kinder comrades. Stealthily pitying the Russian prisoners, they gave them a little brandy and cigarettes, and some who were iaught did two hour-' extra drill each day For a fortnight. "My three sisters were taken away when the Germans left." said a young iiirl. She poke her sisters'' names. Yvonne, Juliette, and Madeleine, cud said they were IS mid 22 and 27. and then, turning awav from me, wept verv bitterly. "They are my da-iighters," said :; middle-aged ,woin;:n. "'".'hen they were taken awav I went a little mad. My pretty girl-,! And all < iir neighbour-,' daughters have gone, i i> from If; yea'rs of age. and all the menfolk up to r,'l. Thev hive gone to slavery, and for the girls it is- a great peril. How

rTow can oar writ" r f th«--e thi' :r-' Por the women it was alwpfvs worst. Many of them had surpassing courage, but. '"ttie were weak and some were bad. The had women | rcyedi on the

other.4 in » way so vile that it seems incredible. There was no dstiuction of class or sex in the forced labour of the harvest iieids Shd delicate women of good families were compelled t.o labour on the soil with girls strong and used' to this toil. There were manv_who died of weakness and pneumonia and underfeeding. THE SUPER-BARBARIANS. "Are you not afraid of being called barbarians for ever?" asked a woman of a, Germain offi.er who had not been brutal, but, like others had tried to soften the hardships of the people. "Madame," lie «aid, very gravely, '• we act under the orders of people greater than ourselves, and we are bound to obey, because otherwise we should be shot. Lut iwe hate the cruelty of war, and wojiate those win have made it. One day we will maike them pay for the vile things we have had to do."

What strange little dramas, what tragic little stories I have heard in these recent days'. I have told the tale of one old priest. Here is the tale of another, as he told it to me in the midst of ruin.

He ii the Abbe Barbe, of Muille, near Ham. In the neighbourhood was an enemy, too. a Frenchman, who was once a Christian Brother and now, unfrocked, a drunkard and a debauchee. He accused the Abbe of Inning a telephone in his cellar from which he sent ine.-isnges to Pa is about German military secrets.

One night there tame a hang at the doer of the Abbe's ytiidy. Five soldiers entered with lixed bayonets and arretted tin- old priest. He was taken to the furtresi of Hym and put into a dark cell with one s.nall iron grating and a plank bed. Here he was interrogated by a, German officer who told him ol the grave a< ■•■u-ation against him. "A SPECIAL PLACE IX HELL." " Search my cellars," sajxl tlie Abbe. " It' there is a telephone ther.', shoot me a- a spy. Tf not. set me free, after \oiii court-martial." There was no i tirt-niMlial. After tour davs in Lit ■■ darkne-N the Abbe was t:iken"aw-.v by Herman soldiers and set down, not at Mi:i!!-\ I.iit at Voy, in;, -. ten kilumetvei i r so aw; y, and forbidden to iro tack t i hi-, village ; r his i hurcli. He went l, ; i'i< wiien the Hermans left. When he went into hi. bouse he round tlvt it had been sacked. All tae rare old la oks in his library h.vl been bun.t. Tie re was nothing t> hi' i. "Sir," said a Sister of Cbarif, " I'ae- • peoule v, horn vnn see her" wn-c brave hut tortured in s-pjrii and ia ln.lv. I!..vond the Cern an lin- M 1..7 have lived in , outlined fear an • < ■ it::de. The files which they hav I.l'd US must make the L'ood Cod v, , ■•' tb ' wicked set' His! feature: T. r • ■A ill he a spe-ial I lace in hell. ,-.,■•■' •. \'-u- the Knineror William and Is- :•■:•<■ 1 f bandits. 1 ' She r-poke the word's as a pic-; -■■ • victien, this little pale ttoni mi bright and kindlv eves, in her dre-s.