The San Antonio Light (San Antonio, Tex.), Vol. 39, No. 126, Ed. 1 Sunday, May 25, 1919 Page: 11 of 48
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Sunday May 25 1919
In a Wide Area Extending From the Alps
to the Sea French and Belgians Are
Reconstructing Their Homes Un-
daunted by the Tremendous Task
That Four Years of War Have Forced
on Them —New Towns Rise on the
Foundations of the Old in Devastated
Area.
By WILLIAM ALLKN WHITE.
(Copyright 1919 by the McClure ’
Ne^»pap»:r Syndhatej
Paris May 7. The stoiy that fol-
lows is not written for those who desire ।
to read about ponderous affairs of state 1
of boundaries and kings and the weighty
scrap-iron secrets of the peace confer-
ence. The story is to tvil something
of how the people whose villages and
farms were broken and battered by war
whose homes were laid waste whose
life and all its contact with a beloved
past was hacked to death of how these
jteople arc coming back to th* ir villages
back to their farms bark to their homes
how they are beginning the resurrec-
tion and the life of the thing that went
down to death ns a victim of war.
The path of death lies about fifty
miles wide and six hunni**! miles long
from the Alps to th** North Sea. It
marks the place where the armies of tin.
allies and th** Germans met. 1 Miring
four years the ti*|es of batt I** washed
over this land backward ami forward
over and over again. No house was kit
standing there in November 191 S; every
village was a white louip looking like a
pile of cement on the plain ; occasionally
a wall would nrotrmlc like a broken
bone from the debris; here and there a
scarred roof generally stripped of its
slate or tile would stretch over two or
three tottering bits of waifs ami nine
in a while on** found some semblam*
of a room in a larger house than the
rent. And indeed in rare instances in
tile larger cities one or two or half a
dozen frames would remain almost un-
touched curious contrasts to th** miles
of smeared dust ami sand and crumbling
shards about them.
But riding through the district in the
winter one saw no life then* —no. native
life. By day soldiers quartered in bar-
racks near by came and lifted th**
stones from the streets piling along
the wav neat puhnbed angular dumps ot
the larger stones. But the walls of the
houses—such few ns were l» ft —sheltrr-
ed only snowdrifts and over the bleak
wastes of the deserted fields the snow
scurried Io lodge in the gaping shell
Roles or tne trriirncs ripx»ed like scars
in the dead earth. No horse no cow
no human thing that * ame from the soil
moved there- only the soldiers —some-
times Americans sometimes French or
British and often Germans all exotic
unnatural ami often in the cold silent
days weird figures moved throuffb the
ruins looking for the unburied Com-
rades. It was not lit*'. It was the s\
bol of dentil that these dark figures
mad** at their dreary task.
Spring Brings Life to France.
the spring came. And with the
vst spring even in March a few
vlera came into the villages and
I They found there generally some
organized agency of help awnit-
£ue mayor or the prefect was
THE SAN ANTONIO LIGHT
chiefly on hand. The courage and the
competent y of these French civil uu-
thoritics was splendid. Americans of
course sent money to the devastated
areas of France; also they sent effec-
tive workers. And the soldiers did
much; but the French constituted an-i
thoritics after all were the main-springs
of the work that has been done to re- ]
store France since the armistice. As I
the people came straggling back two’
by two one family at a time or perhaps
even one member of a family at a time'
scouting they often found barracks in '
the villages and towns —sombre board '
houses ugly but warm—and in these
th** n fug^M's managed to live. Some- I
times these barracks housed several fain-1
ilies.
And this the French hate above every- j
thing. Privacy is essentially a French’
need. The walled garden the compart- j
meat car. the lane private courtyard•
in th** middle * lass house—all these tes- *
tify th** Frenchman’s desire to be away .
from the crowd. So he ami his family .
went to a dugout left by th** soldiers
rather than go to the barracks; or tin*
villagers went to a vaulted cellar un-
der some ruin or boarded up a broken ;
wall in a roofless ruin put in a tin
bucket under the more fluent leaks and
lived there rather than to go into tin? j
community barracks. Yet so badly
broken were some of the villages ami so .
remote from military operations that no .
dugouts were available and no two
walls stood up for the basis of a shel-
ter.
Some Found Houses.
In such cases people were compelled
|to go into barracks. Occasionally the 1
barracks were walled off into rooms;
1 perhaps th** men occupied one part ami
the women the other. Ami in some rare
uml joyous instances the people com-
' mg back found that little square board
houses had been erected for them even
j if with but one room and in these
houses they lived most happily but not
* contentedly For the Frenchman hates
ugliness with intense loathing; he hates
i to be ugly almost as much as he hates
to be herded in masses.
As soon as the spring really opened
j —possibly in late March or early April
| a dozen people out of a thousand had
mine back to their homes. And the
first thing these people did was to get
1 to work on their farms or in their gar-
-1 dens.
i Garden tools and agricultural implv-
[ incuts were priceless. Even the rich
Americans could not produce garden
tools in sufficient number* nor plows
I and horses enough to till the fields. The
' Americans did produce hundreds of trac-
j tor plows. But in fields owned in such
: small parcels as the French fields are
। owned tractors are hard to use. They
’ make operations expensive. Yet they
। were used and served well —but not as
The Resurrection And
tn e U ’ i 4
THEY FLED BEFORE THE GERMAN ADVANCE
well ns American** at home would sup-
pose. Living in dugouts in cellars in
ruins with but a few feet of moving
spar** about them and walking miles
to their farms the French villagers be-
gan their spring work—only a hand-
ful of them but enough to get in their
little gardens and to plant some crops.
American Help .Much in Evidence.
Beside the mayor usually in the vil-
lages ami in all tin* big towns —towns of
over three thousand—the refugees com-
ing back found some kind of organized
help. ’l’li** ‘ I nion of the Women of
Frane**” was greatly in evidence. Of
course the American Red Cross was
everywhere. It was furnishing blankets
and sin'll clothing as might be impro-
vis*d from the hospital garments left
over from our war supplies and the
French women were as handy as Yan-
kees in making something out of some-
thing else in cloth.
Th** American Red Cross also furnish-
ed transportation more or less for th*
returning families to move the little
goods they hail saved from the Germans
or hail accumulated since leaving thcii
homes. Th** Red Cross best of all fur-
nished willing nii'ii and women to heli
in a thousand little ways about th*
new homes furnished doctors who went
about caring for the sick in a land de
spoiled of doctors by the war. furnishe*
nurses to look after the children am;
furnishe*! in every one of twenty-fiv*
districts of France a sane kind wise
man who during those first weeks o!
the re-establishment was guide phil
osopher and friend to thousands of pro
pie. He was the district superintcndeni
of all Red Cross activities. If he couh
have had seeds ami tools and more met
to help him. he would have done vastly
more. But with what lie had he ncarh
imnrovised divine Providence!
But. the Red (’ross was not the onlj
American agency at work among th*
ruins to bring life out of civil death
The American Committee for Relief ii
the Devastated Ar**n did a splendi<
work: so did th** Smith College I nit
anti so did the Friends mid many othei
similar agencies. Hundreds of helpiiq
hands from America and Great Britain
were working with the French people ii
those days of March and April and Maj
1919 bringing order out of chaos. The*
had prepared the way during the win
ter.
The work of th** American committe
is typical. It nicked out certain vil
luges and literally mothered those vil
•- Inges into life. During the coldest days
n ! of the winter the women of this work
g were abroad distributing food and
s clothing and helping in any practical
•- way to make a family comfortable. In-
I-' cubators were bought; a little button
r ’ sold in America “Have You a Chicken
-. I in France?’’ netted 517.00 G for chicken
growing and a lot of chicks may be in-
I cubnted with that sum. and by early
d spring hundreds of thousands of ehiek-
I* ens wen* peeping umler old shawls and
<1 in comforters mnl old clothes —chicks
•f that never would have been better than
d fried eggs except for the girls who
h. worked this button plan. And it was
• M I one of a dozen schemes to alleviate th**
’• French life in the long panorama of
f I despair that was gashed across France
p and Belgium when the green got back
*' in the trees this spring.
The Friends built houses; they
helped the Frenchmen restore the
'’’crushed homes; they helped in the
i’’ fields as farm workmen; they distribut-
s ‘ । ed aid when* charity was needed and
j? ■ sold on credit where people desired
I credit ami for cash where they had it
such things as the people me<led that
' could be supplied. The matter of mer-
t ’chandiring was one of the hardest things
■the people helping in the devastated
( i [ areas had to do. They were quite will-
• ing to give things away. But the self-
; respe<'t of th** French resented that ami
. ( the next thing was the matter of start-
' ing stores and selling at cost. The
i ! women of the American Committee for
u । instance found that if they sold things
lt lnt c**st it kept out the French store
Id 1 keepers who after all should come in ami
n ’establish themselves as soon as possible
ly j So the committee tried to avoid sell-
ly | ing directly to the people and em^mr-
! age*l storekeepers to come in. To these
ly storekeepers the committee furnishd
le goods—groceries rough dry goods and
h. simple hardware nt actual cost price
in nt wohlesab* in the French ports. Ami
id the committee required that the village
t storekeepers should mark th** cost price
i*r ami the selling price in plain figures
ig adding ten per cent for handling the
n goods. This gave the storekeeper his
in profit ami helped to re-establish trade
ly in the community; and it kept down
*y • profiteering.
n-; One of the serious prob’ems of the re-
' construction was the matter of house
ee building Certainly there was plenty of
il- goo*l building material on every town-
Li-1 site. But it was in negligee as it were.
/ OY
'(OHHirrFg
PUOUC
Practically every village had to be com-
pletely torn down before rebuilding;
could begin. Ami when in a town of
30.000 this process was required as in
Lille or Rheims or Soissons or (.’am-
brni or St. (Juentin it represented
years of labor. But the French are
ioath to give up their towns. To them
the connection with the past is impor-
tant indeed it is vital. The fact that
generations of a family have lived upon
a site signifies something deep ami
powerful in French life. It means lit-
tle or nothing in American life. De-
stroy a town like Omaha so that it
would have to be torn down and carted
off before it could be rebuilt the town
would merely move up *>r down the river
a mile or two and begin again.
But even in the smallest poorest
most terribly wrecked French villages
the people are stirring among the ruins
and no on** thinks of going to another
townsite. So the problem of rebuilding
the houses arises. French people arc
spending millions of francs on city ami
village plans. American committees
from th** Red Cross all over the benevo-
lent area of her activities are working
out plans for modern houses not ma
terially different from the ruined
French homes but somewhat more sani-
tary. For instance the manure pile
which so often in the French home tow-
ered as a mark of social distinction in
the front yard in the new house plans
has been moved to the rear of the es-
tablishment and the entrance to the
house is no longer through of by or
near the stable.
French Veneration for Old Homes.
That profound feeling of the French
for France comes to all Frenchmen; it
is not the possession of the lowly. For
the beauty of it shines in the lives of
the educated Frenchman as well as in
the ignorant peasants.
Not far from Bleirancourt is a farm
called the Farm of the Quarries. Near
the farm is the ruin of a splendid cha-
teau. Before the war Madame Devereux
lived in the chateau with her little son
and managed th* 2(MM)-acre estate from
which a little village under the hillside
beneath the quarry drew* its life. Be-
fore burning the chateau the Germans
looted it. They took every valuable
thing in it. A few days iu advance of
her flight from the chateau Madame
Devereux had hidden all h‘*r "
in a secret chamber in a sub cellar. And
’ after burning the chateau the Germans
CMJRCUES WERE SPECIAL TARGET? FOR GERMAN GUNNERS ♦ ■ co^ht. nrrreitH titwweK union
quartered soldiers In the great cellars
of the place and there they fouml the
secret chambers in the sub-cellar and
took everything out of the cache. So
when the Germans were driven out of
the place in 191# Madame Devereux
came back to find everything gone but
the land. That was a waste —the trees
stripped by shell-fire the fields raked
with barrage fin* that had turned the
gravel up and turned the rich soil
under while trenches zig-zagged across
the land cutting it horribly.
The people were gone from the vil-
lage. It lay below the Farm of the
Quarries a dead silent thing under the
cold winter sky when Madame Deve-
reux came back to see it iu late No-.
BEAUTIFUL OLD RESIDENCES RUIHED BY SMELLS
veniber. But she did not go back to ers; quartered them; put them to wo
Paris. It was no question of money. on the fields filling the shell holes a
trher’hon.e h T B s li ^n.e’ t The benches cutting down wire weeds
had run up a cement wall in the quarry war—vines wherefrom young mei
wich was burrowed far into the hill- blood had flowed—like wine—and s
side. It made a fairly warm room but looked after the food and shelter of t
t was still a hole in the hillside —jusl
hat. There she brought a rug; a bed
wo little tables a petite stove aboul
he size of a valise a beautiful ma
logany secretary anil a case of books—-
ind there she and her son lived.
A maid came with her and a farmei
ind his wife lived in the next quarrj
room but one. All through the cob
winter in that dark little hole in th<
Hill she lived but more than that sin
iat hours every day at her desk writing
irdering provisions building material
food clothing supplies for her people
Xo one was in the village: but she knev
what the spring would bring. She wen
ibout the country iu a little motor car
she secured a gang of German prison
Second News Section
prisoners and you may well believe six
saw that they worked.
In February a villager appeared. 1
week later two others. In March t
dozen people were in the village. Thet
all worked. Madame Devereux saw that
their work took direction. One room ;
one cellar one part of a house one shel-
ter after another took form. When th«
refugees came back in April a few
: places were ready for them and they
worked with the others who knew how
to work and soon places for fifty peo-
pie were ready. And then they all i
made gardens. The fields were planted '
: and life began. But it was the homing I
; instinct of one noble French woman who
• breathed life into that village. She
knew her people. She loved them. She
worked with them. Her scorn for the
countess on the adjoining estate who
said she expected to come to her place
when the weather settled —how abysmal
that contempt was.
The French government also is doing
all that it can to bring the living condi-
tions ot the villages and farms back to i
their normal level. Provision is made ■
that any seven neighboring land own- j
ers may form a co-operative agricultural
society or unit borrow money from the f
government to restock their stables to
replant their fields to rebuild their '
houses and barns and to buy new farm j
machinery—which by the way is hardly 1
to be had at any price. Theoretically ]
this should make France blossom as the 2
rose in a year. But the French farmer i
is sadly like the American farmer. He
is an individualist. He will not co-
operate except as he is forced into it.
The government provides for co-opera- j
tion in crop planting or in crop tend- 3
ing. or in crop harvesting or in crop
selling or in any or all of these things a
in order to make the credit safe so
that one man's failure may not jeopar- j
dize the common lean. But generally *
the French farmers are shy on the plan.
Helping Hands Needed.
So the helping hands of Americana i
and of others from the more favored na-
tions of the world are needed. They
must go in. not in a large way operat- |
ing with set rules. The real help to the <|
French people in the devastated area S
will come from the people who will Uy; 3
with them work with them understand J
the peculiar needs of each section in- fl
deed of each village and perhape of Jj
each family. Small units can do great ■
good The man or group of men whe
will try to help oue town do one 3
two first hand things can do a C
work. It requires no very large cap- ri
ital. A few thousand dollars will go aj
\ a long way in a French village: and no ■
’ great training—just common sense and n
/ ( a will to serve in a neighborly human
; way without officiousness.
I America must keep on helping. Our
hand is to the plough: we cannot look*;
backward. And it is a part of the pact M
of peace our duty in the neighborhood Jg
of nations to act the neighbor's part.
rk That more than treaties and understand-^
~i irgs and policies of statesmen will bring.
u peace permanently on earth among m»n a
" { of good will. And from kindness will a
i's after all come finally all this wi rhIJM
he ever may know of "the resurrection and
he the life.”
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Diehl, Charles S. & Beach, Harrison L. The San Antonio Light (San Antonio, Tex.), Vol. 39, No. 126, Ed. 1 Sunday, May 25, 1919, newspaper, May 25, 1919; San Antonio, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1615131/m1/11/?rotate=90: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .