MARK OF THE BEAST.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 June 1917, Page 6

MARK OF THE BEAST.

• SHAMEFUL STORY OF THE ~ RETREAT. (London Times Special Correspondent). ' Britisli Headquarters, March 31. Shame! Shame! Shame! and contempt for the Germans and pride in our own men: these are the feelings which must inflame any man as he goes through this devastated country from which we are steadily hunting the enemy. After an absence of three months from the Somme front, I have to-day ranged over a wide tract of country by Roye and Nesle, green country much of it, almost unscarred by shells, such as one had long forgotten the existence of on the old Somme line, where the new grass is springing and trees are budding, and everything combines to make it a beautiful land if the Mark of the Beast was not over it all.

Churches outraged and defiled; tombs broken open and rifled of their contents; the poor goods of peasants in their cottages burned or broken with minute malignity; farm implements smashed and battered so as to be useless for husbandry; orchard after orchard of fruit trees systematically murdered, tree by tree: what are the military reasons which justify these things? Perhaps the saddest sight is that family vault at Goyancourt, facing the ruins of the beautiful old chateau, into which the Germans have recently forced an entrance, broken open the casket and cut the leaden coffin to steal whatever of value might be within. The vault is temporarily closed again and bears, in chalk, the piteous inscription: On'est prie de respecter cette sepulture de famille violee par les infames Boches! ■

The slabs have been lifted bodily from graves—not by any explosion, but by human hands—and the graves are empty. What was the ghoulish motive? Was it for the sake of the lead in which the bodies were enclosed? It may have been; or-it may have been the mere spite against all sacred things which has found full vent in the wreckage of the church. i That is a pitiable sight. One is accustomed here to the spectacle of church which have been reduced to ruins by gfun -fire; but the church of Liancourt Fosse has been partially blown up, then plundered, and defiled with precisely the same unholy rage as the Germans have wreaked on the simple homes of the peasants and the innocent trees and shrubs. There has been deliberate, and individual destruction of the , articles of worship. Sacred syruhols and images have been battered and. defaced; the Holy Books are torn and trampled underfoot;, the vestments have been fouled; beneath the ruined vault you now walk ankle-deep in a litter and bricks and stained glass fragments, pages torn from testaments and prayer-books, and broken bits of statues.

These things, however, while they arouse an anger and contempt of tho German which civilised peoples will surely nurse for generations to come, arc only details in the great panorama of desolation. It is an extraordinary experience to go over the old familiar roads past places where, until two weeks ago, it was necessary to take cover in communication trenches; on boldly along the open highways till you come to our old front line; beyond the litter twisted wire and rubbish; past the shell-pitted expanse of what was No Man's Land—it it our land now—across the German main front line with dense belts of rusted wire and chevaus de frise; and still on by a wilderness of trench behind trench, belt beyond belt of wire, empty gun emplacements, deserted concrete defences, and all the litter of war, out to a level land—the great SanterVe plain—where war flew by so swiftly, our men on the heels of the Germans, that it has hardly left a footprint on the soil.

The Germans, of course, had thrown trees across the roads, torn up the manways, blown huge craters in them, and exploded charges in every culvert. But that has all been repaired. Our engineers have done marvels, and, working with that cheerful casual competence which is so characteristic of him, tho British soldier has made good the ravages of the flying enemy with extraordinary rapidity. He may stop now and again to offer some comfort to a civilian passing on the road—a woman with children probably—who has lived for two years under German rule but is now frfie again, but broken and penniless. He may express himself briefly on the, slaughtered fruit trees by the roadside or some other evidence of the spirit of the enemy whom he is hunting. But these things only make him work the harder; and, if the German could only understand it, one half the things which he does only make his enemies more terrible. I believe it to be absolutely true that the British Army here is fighting to-day, not in any ordinary spirit in which war is made, but with something of the old zeal of the crusades: a determination that a foul and loathsome thing has to be stamped off the earth. It is a dreadful spirit for tho Germans to have to confront, and one sees something of its invincibility hire. The German has'left these positions (it cannot be too clearly stated) only because he could not hold them.