EUROPE AFTER THE STORM.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 February 1920, Page 11

EUROPE AFTER THE STORM.

YOUTH DANCES ON THE EDGE OP RUIN. (By Philip Gibbs). Any man who can unravel the tangled threads of this web of life in Europe after the storm of war is a seer with supernatural wisdom. For he must have understanding not only of the myßtery of fintince by which bankrupt peoples are spending moro money than ever before in history on personal luxury and pleasure, but also of that greater mystery of the human heart which, bleeding from many wounds, and stored with tragic memories, not yet 12 months old, is concealing its agony under a mask of gaiety, or—is that so?—forgetting the black past, not looking forward to a future full of peril, and living in tlis present for all that it is worth. I found that spirit in Paris, where outwardly all is gay, though beneath the camouflage there is the skeleton of trouble. I have found it also on the edge of the battlefields in cities like Amiens and Lille, where industrial distress is acute yet not a hindrance to popular pleasure in cinemas, booths, concert halls, and cafes, where always the ears of the people Rre tickled by the jingle of orchestra and other forms of music. Now, coming across the frontier from France into Belgium, I find the same superficial gaiety and joie de vivre; a flinging about of paper-money by all classes in spite of the fantastic co3t of living (as though money could be printed on Government presses as fast as there is need of it), and no sign of anguish, plainly revealed, on the faces of people who were long under hostile rule, who suffered exceedingly by fines, imprisonments, and tyranny, and whose industries and fortunes were utterly ruined by a general campaign of destruction. Belgium was hard hit by the war from the tragedy of the invasion. Most ; of her factories in cities like Bruges, Ghent, and. Antwerp were robbed >of their machinery, if they were not' destroyed like Ypres under the flail of war. .. ....

guish, plainly revealed, on the faces of people who were long under hostile rule, who suffered exceedingly by fines, imprisonments, and tyranny, and whose industries and fortunes were utterly ruined by a general campaign of destruction. Belgium was hard hit by the war apart from the tragedy of the invasion. Most ; of her factories in cities like Bruges, Ghent, and. Antwerp were robbed >of their machinery, if they were not destroyed like Ypres under the flail of war. .. . A .friend of mine who was a great manufacturer, with works at Ypres and [Bailleul and other towns in Flanders, [told me yesterday, that .he had abandoned the hope of re-starting those industries, "The ,German army," lie said, "sat down on all my factories, and where they sat down they squashed everything to dust. There is nothing to be done except to plant woods there and say, 'This is No Man's Land.' In our time we.shall not see factory chimneys rise in those places. Who thinks so. dreams." The present condition of. Belgium is not brilliant. Manufacturers are living on ■ ctqdit and not on production, although some.of the factories are beginning jto work again, and the best, brains in Belgium are making great efforts in private enterprise, without relying at all on Government aid, which is slow, hesitating, and —tip to the present, I am told —hopelessly unpractical. The Government, proposal to raise a big loan by means of a popular lottery is denounced by many thoughtful men, it seems,- as a most immoral policy, which will still further slacken the industry of the masses, who, after the shock of war, are tired, without energy, and distasteful of toil.

The free issue of money paper makes the exchanges (merciless against Belgium, where now, 45f. go to the English pound, and prices are raised at the same time as wages are increased by the pressure of continual strikes. Many of the working men of Belgium, whose labor was very cheap before the war, and whose conditions of life were very low in the scale of comfort, have been to England since then, and have been inspired with envy for the English Tate of pay, and demand that rate with a loud voice, though it is fantastic in relation to the ruin of so many employers of labor, the dearness of material, and the lack of capital. There is a menacing murmur of the masses in a city like Brussels, where two days ago there was a monster procession led by war widows, mutilated men and wounded soldiers demanding justice, work, and lower prices. Truly the Belgian Government, faced by the deserts, of its battlefields, immense debts and lack of production, must hear the voice of the people, impatient of delay, with anxious ears. , There is no signs of those troubles, however, in public places, except where processions pass, and no shadow on the faces of the people.

I I was impressed by the gaiety, even the joyousneas, of the crowd in the .-Grande Place of Bruges the night before last—that-lovely old square of Flemish houses so rich and warm in the sunlight, so Steeped in 'he beauty of the Flemish Renaissance, where all day long, at hours, and half-hours, and quarters, the carillon of the Belfry plays little jangling tunyes in which there is the merry, sad music of the Middle Ages, so that one sees little flaxen-haired princesses and the fair daughters of fat Burghers dancing on their toes over these cobble stones.

There were no princesses of Flanders or Brabant in this square that night; but swarms of flaxen-haired girls, who belong by right of birth and blue eyes to the period of Rubens, who painted them as virgins and angels and great ladies of piety at the throne of Heaven. Among them were English and American girls, staring about them as though in the middle of a fairy tale, and young Belgian soldiers, and officers with a tuft of yellow hair below their tasselled caps, like those I met in evil days by Dixmude and Pervyse, and the boys of Bruges demobilised into civil suits bought (some of them, I guess) in England. What had brought them all out into the Grande Place was a band in the middle of the square. It was a band of musicians in bowler hats, but very military in their choice of tunes and in their splendid rhythm. "La Fille de Madame Angot" they were playing, and the crowd surged round in a kind of walking dance, and there were lovemaking and laughter, pleasant to see under the sky. The girl who keeps a htm shop at the corner of the square—l took tea there on the day when the Germans left a year ago—recalled some of her memories of the war. They ranged from the execution of Captain Fryatt to the petty tyrannies of Admiral Shroeder, but she dwelt most on the fact of a young British officer. He walked into her shop a few days ago with his mother, and she asked herself "Where have I seen that boy's face before? Surely I have seen him in the time of war." Then she remembered a face at the window of the cafe opposite. It was a boy's face above the ur.iforfri (if an English aviator. He was a prisoner, and all day long lie stared out of the window into the Grande Place where he could not go, and at the bun shop whose buns he desired Then one day the face from a window disappeared—on the way to a German

prison. "It Was strange," .said the girl. "I knew him at once when lie came in with His mother, just the other day." I mingled with the crowd in the Grande Place of Bruges. There was no trace of war's agony in any one of these people. No look of misery. It was on the -coast that I saw the most gay little scene—a queer, amusing picture of life in Europe after the storm.

There is an old song about Avignon, where once I went: Sur le pont d'Avignon Tout le monde y danse.

And on the digue of Zoute-Knoeke everybody dances, in the moonlight or the starlight, by the sand-dunes and the sea. It is the "chic" place in Belgium. The best society is there, in little villas amid the dunes, within view of Zeebrugge, where this morning I saw the scene of that astounding exploit of the British A T avy and the destruction which still remains. Close to these little villas at Zoute is still a battery of 13in. naval guns, wonderfully camouflaged among the dunes, built by the Gemans (and damaged beyond Use before they left) to defend the coast against our fleet. The sight of those monsters in their concrete beds is a horrible reminder of the war that was here along the shore of Belgium, and not far away, at Heyst and Blankenbergh, many houses were hit by shellfire. At Zoute-Knocke people go to forget the war, and present troubles, and on the digue—or parade as we should call it—they dance, and dance. It is a pretty sight, I must confess. There are charming girls there of the best Belgian I families, and lots of children, the English girls, and Americans, and Russians, and Poles and Czecho-Slovaks, with young men who, I found, had been prisoners in Germany, or officers at Dixmude, or in a pleasant exile in England, during the war. The orchestra for the dance was not magnified. It Was a simple piano-organ Worked by the untiring arms |of a humble philanthropist, not with-, out.reward. It played "Tipperary," and "The Broken Doll" unceasingly, to the j rhythm of the fox-trot and the one-step. The light from cafe windows splashed across the roadway, making shadow pictures on the pavement of the dancers who came within its gleam, whose frockj! and faces were touched by its glamour until they danced into the gloom beyond that range of radiance where there was night and the pale sea. Outside the cafes sat the fathers and mothers of the dancers, smiling as they watched the swaying of young couples, the fantastic steps, the queer rhythmic kaleidoscope of that dance on the Digue. The wind was strong. It caught many a tress and blew it across the laughing face of a girl. It'wnfted off the hats of the boys and made their hair wild. Frocks were tossed into billows above long white stockings and long black stockings, and in and out- of the grownup dancers email children danced, wonderfully learned in the latest steps, like little marionettes. Next to me sat a man who had factories at Ypres and Baillcul and Messines, where now there, are only ashes and the rags and bones of buildings. Some of his girls were dancing there, and he smiled as he watched them pass, greeting him with their eyes, over, the shoulders of their cavaliers. "It is youth that dances on the- edge of ruin, he said in French. "It is youth that dances to the tune of life. Thank God forthat!" To-night in Brussels the opera was crowded at the performance of "Le Jonglelir de Notre Dame" and "She herezade"—a violent contrast between the Christian faith in its simplest expression and paganism in its most cruel and voluptuous form. In the streets were crowds of laughing people. No trace of sadness in the public places to-night as ..far as I could see—though two days ago the war widows and the mutilated led the way of a demonstration demanding the means of life.