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DEVASTATION OF FRANCE.

RUINED COUNTRYSIDE. DESTRUCTION OP 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 .'he allied countries. The impression made on them was summarised by Mr. H. J. Mackinder, M.'P. for Camlacliie division of Glasgow, in a letter to the London Times. Mr. Mackinder remarked ihat 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 3000 of 4000 inhabitants, exactly one month before the evacuation, 700 men and women, between the ages c." 15 and 60, 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 <he number, because their ages fell within the limits stated. To-day the remnant of the people of Ham 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 afii! small towns of the departments of the Somme, the Aisne and the Oise.

TENS OP 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 Ims been done in this matter it must be realised that this is one of the richest fruit districts even in fruit-growing France. Not merely were there many orchards, and fruit trees round almost every house, and avenues of fruit trees along the roads, but practically every field in the country-side was studded with fine trees, from 20 to 100 years old—applefl, 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 £OO francs, 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 have been felled. When you look from a hill top they lie across the fields ranged in ranks like men lying in extended order, not a branch having been, lopped away, and each stump having a white, newly-cut top to it. In some communes a few trees re-v main Btanding, but even of these whole' groups have rings neatly chipped round them so that they will die. "At Couey-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 ease when masonry of this kind is broken up, but have been reduced to '.heir component stones, which now lie in an immense shapeless heap. There is no military excuse for this crime again?' 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 militray necessity. "At Chauny every single house, except in one suburb, lias 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 tho 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 broken brick at about the eye-level of a standing man."" In,conclusion, Mr. Mackinder remarks: —"lt is said that the German object in all this has been to frighten the peasantry of F*ncc into peace, lest similar things should be done in the districts not yot evacuated. If that be indeed so, they have not reckoned with the French Army. The indications are all of a set determination to take a terrible retribution, though I do not think it will be barbaric. Perhaps the felling of the fruit trees is felt by this army of peasants as the foulest stab of all. It is difficult, indeed, but vitally important, to make the people of Britain realise the coldly scientific method of the Hun. The war is for him an act of commerce. It begins to appear that after all the result of it may not be a capital investment for himself, and therefore he destroys systematically the capital of his future competitor."

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/TDN19170604.2.14

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Taranaki Daily News, 4 June 1917, Page 3

Word count
Tapeke kupu
906

DEVASTATION OF FRANCE. Taranaki Daily News, 4 June 1917, Page 3

DEVASTATION OF FRANCE. Taranaki Daily News, 4 June 1917, Page 3

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