Shell-Tom Ground Bears Rich Crops

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 426, 7 August 1928, Page 9

Shell-Tom Ground Bears Rich Crops

Nature Has Smoothed Man’s War Madness PILGRIMS AND THE PAST (United P.A.—By Tejegraph — Copyright) (Australian and N.Z. Press Association) LONDON, Sunday. Describing the visit to Ypres of the British Legionaries, who are now on a tour of the battlefields of France and Belgium, the Paris correspondent of the “Sunday Express” says: Ypres has become the headquarters of thousands ot men who are trying to keep an emotional appointment with the past. Men who had not seen the Ypres sector since the war, gazing there to-day were dazed to the point of stupefaction. Some of them were on the verge of tears when they saw it. Nature lias smoothed out man’s insanity. The ground which for four years was ploughed by the guns of Europe is now bearing the richest crops in its history. Many ex-soldiers stood on the site of their old dug-outs and wondered whether it was all a dream.

The pilgrims were to be seen comparing notes as they sat in cafes in the Grand Place. They relate how they went to seek their old headquarters and found shops where camisoles and silk nightgowns are sold. Even in the cheap little vulgar shops which have sprung up souvenirs of the Great War are being sold. “Hell-fire Corner” has become a tidy little farm with chickens running about. The pilgrims, including more than 1,000 mothers, widows and fiancees of ex-soldiers, headed by the Countess Haig, were bewildered by the new Ypres Town Hall. The city is little changed and the past can easily be recalled. Vimy Ridge, thanks to the Canadian Government, is exactly as it was. Thiepval is still a place of skeleton trees. Occasionally muddy buttons or badges are unearthed. The pilgrims who are seeking memories are finding them until their hearts ache. The white rows in the cemeteries, like battalions on parade in lovely places of green turf and flowers, bring heart-aches though there is peace and beauty. There the noble dead, are locked away from the world’s sorrows, in earth which is “for ever England.”