FRANCE.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 September 1919, Page 5

FRANCE.

RESTORATION OF DEVASTATED TERRITORY, ARMIES OF GERMANS AND CHINESE CLEANING UP. By Toleßrapi.—Press Assn.- Copyright. London, Sept. 20. A special correspondent visiting the old battlefields of the Australians in France and Belgium says that the peasants are striving again to raise corn amid the shell-holes and smashed redoubts. Weeds grow thigh high amid the ruins and tumbled earth. The War Office has 200,000 Germans and 85,000 Chinese, under British officers, clearing up the fields, collecting rusty iron, barbed wire, old shells, and rails. They dynamite the German redoubts for the steel girders. Old villagers dig among ruins for hidden treasures. The chink of the demolishera' tools resounds across the wide valleys where formerly battles raged. Souvenirs can still be found in the woods and fields in the shape of tattered uniforms and scattered crosses marking graves. As a general rule along the whole front, where the ground has not been heavily shelled, agriculture is beginning again, bitt elsewhere there is (to sign, indeed no hope, of re-settlement. Every yard of the shell-tortured earth wiil have to be laboriously treated—Aus. N.Z. Cable Assoc. REDUCTION OF ARMY. Paris, Sept. 20. Tn the Senate M. Douroer announced that in future the reorganised army of France would total 350,000 on a peace footing, comprising two home army corps and one colonial army corps in North Africa. The strength on a war footing would be 1,300,000. Six infantry and one cavalry divisions were earmarked for the Rhine occupation. Universal compulsory service would be ffduced from three years to one year, "fhis would produce 200.000 men, while enlistments and re-enlistments would give 150,000.—Reuter. LENOIR'S REPRIEVE. Paris, Sept. 20. .When the officials entered Lenoir's cell in the curly morning to prepare liim for execution they found him dressing, and when asked if he had any statement to make he declared that before God and man he was innocent of the treason and protested against the refusal to confront him with M. Caillanx, saying that the latter USed him as a tool. He rßade other allegations against M. Cailliur. The statement wfls conveyed tt> MM Poinenre and Oleinoncoau, with the result that Lotinir was temporarily reprieved.— Aus. N.Z. Cable Assoc.