RIVERS RUNNING RED.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 113, 15 May 1916, Page 6

RIVERS RUNNING RED.

THE VENGEANCE OF FEANCE, JOY AMID DESOLATION AROUND VERDUN. Every now and then at long and rare intervals you may meet a few civilians on the roads around.Verdun. They are in little groups of two or three as a rule but sometimes one meets one alone, a woman, an old woman, usually with brow brown face sturdy tread, scanty grey hair, and the fierce look of an old she-wolf who has snapped and snarled to t-he bitter end and is now farced to go. Just such an oM woman wandered into a motor transport the other -day, says the Paris correspondent of the "Daily Express." "Where are you going, mother?" she was asked; "that is not the way to safety.'' "I am not seeking safety/ ' she said. 'l'm going down the hill thei'3 to where the river r.uns red with red ice on it. I want to see this and die happy.'' The old woman is typical of the spirit of the whole countryside. The peasantry are absolutely fearless, almost unconscious of danger. They know what the Germans are. They have li/ed in expectation of a great revenge. The bill is being paid now, and they know it, and they are fiercely, bitterly, cruelly, calmly exultant. This is their moment.

It is true that, the broken ice in the rivers is red,'and t-hat the hillsides are heaped thickly with walls of half-fros.cn German corpses. There are no words to convey a. picture of the ghastly devastation, the utter misery of this whole oonntrvside round Verdun.

You read the words, "Enemy forced back with heavy loss,'" in the communique. I have told you of t&o slippery, greasy, clay of th'e inhospitable hillsides, the stony ravines, the' little wood so cut about and battered, shattered, and charred by artillery that they look as though giant jaws had chewed them rejected them, You nead of villages in which hardly a house remains whole but I wonder whether you have realised that the ruins of the villages Jl9 /e been shot* to pieces, again and again until they look like the very abomination of aVsolctioU. And now in and out along three miles of -horror the peasanf/y are wandering | about to drink the scene in and quench the bitter thirst of hatred. 'lhese people of Lorraine have been under the German heel 1 for a generation. They have not forgotten for one single moment during 44 years, and vengeance is theirs r;t last. If anybody doubts t'lat the Hun is being driven out of France at last, let him 1 talk to a peasant near Verdan. He need not even talk to him; 113 need but say, 'I am an Englishman,-' and hold out his hand. 'Ah, the pigs, he will]say, 'we have them at last.' And he will stumble on to feed his bruised -heai't on the meal of ghastliness around him

FUTURE OF BELGIUM.

''FINER PLAJE TN THE SUN.' ' FAITH IN THE ALLIES. Speaking at -i Franco-Belgian demonstration at the Sorbune in Paris, .Baton Loyeis, the Peljiiu-i Foreign Minister,, dealt with the relations between F.eigiuin and the Allies:' 1 "When I was in Ber] ; n,'' he said, "complaint us?d to b«. ma do t) me' sometimes tho open sympathy of the Belgians for France. T used to want to reply, "Be as amiable as the French, then, ' Ir, would have been too> much to ask ' .-.'he German did not want > to be loved but to be v'eaied. The infallible instinct of tti~» Belgian t<". pe, as though it read the future, turned towards Belgium's southern neighbour in whom it found nany traits of the Belgian character—gaiety, generosity,! confidence. It was aot merHuy the natural inclination of the Walloon for the Frenchman. The Flemings of Belgium in their hearts have never yielded to the flatteries of the German, nor hesitated to hold a hand out to the French. "To-day the hand is the hand of a nation oppressed because of its loyalty, and it is held oat by Belgium to France and the Allies for deliverance from the fatal embrace of Prussian proved their valour in performance will fight to the end t.' gain the full independence that is necessary to their life, knowing well in this —France, Britain, and Russia have reaffirmed it with ceremony in a recent declaration which, sustains and consols us in our trials—taat they can count upon these great and generous nations. Again we shall take our place in the sun, a fmor place and a more notable, and with the help of the Allies raise patiently the edifice of the national prosperity.'"'