Last August, at an assembly in Paris, Ambassador Sharp held a little
company spellbound, while he related several incidents of his
investigations in the devastated region near Roye. One afternoon the
captain stopped his military automobile upon the edge of what had once
been a village. Surveyors were tracing the road and making measurements
in the hope of establishing the former location of the cellar and the
house that stood above it. An old gray-haired Frenchman had the matter
in charge. He had lost the cellar of his house. Also, the trees that had
stood upon his front sidewalk, also his vines and fruit trees. His story
as stated by Ambassador Sharp was most pathetic. The old man had retired
from business to the little town of his childhood. When it became
certain that the Germans would take the village, the man pried up a
stone slab in the sidewalk and buried his money, far out of sight. A
long time passed by. When the Hindenburg plans were completed, the
Germans made their retreat. Among other refugees who returned was the
aged Frenchman. To his unbounded amazement the old man could not locate
the site of his old home. In bombarding the little village, the Germans
dropped huge shells. These shells fell into the cellar, and blew the
brick walls away. Other shells fell in the front yard, and blew the
trees out by the roots. Later other shells exploding blew dirt back into
the other excavations. Little by little, the ground was turned into a
mass of mud. Not a single landmark remained. Finally the old man
conceived the idea of beginning back on the country road, and measuring
what he thought would have been the distance to his garden. But even
that device failed him. For the huge shells had blown the stone slab
into atoms, scattered his buried treasure, and left the man in his old
age penniless and heart-broken.
Long ago Dumas represented the man who had taken too much wine as trying
in vain to enter his own home, explaining to his inebriated friend that
the keyhole was lost. But think of a cellar that is lost! Think of shade
trees, whose very roots have disappeared! Think of a lovely little
French garden with its roses and vines, and fruit trees, all gone! "Why,
the very well was with difficulty located," said the Ambassador. But
after all, the loss of buried treasure that could never be found is only
a faint emblem of the loss of human bodies and human minds. Think of the
soldiers who have returned to find that the young wife or daughter whom
they loved has disappeared forever! And think of the wives and
sweethearts who have received word from their officers that the great
shell exploded and killed the lover, but that no fragment of his body
could be found! During one day Mr. Chamberlain and myself were driven
through twenty-four series of ruins, that once had been towns and
villages, but where there was nothing left but cellars filled with
twisted iron and blackened rafters. Already, men are anticipating the
hour of victory and talking about the reconstruction of the devastated
regions, the enforced service of a million German factories, building up
what once they had torn down. But the restoring of houses, the
restoration of factory and schoolhouse, of church and gallery, represent
a material recovery. But the other day, a French woman was invited
before the general who decorated the widow and praised her, returning to
her the thanks of France, in that her last and seventh son had just been
killed. Her response was one of the most moving things in history. "I
have given France my all. These flowers, ah, sir, I have but one use for
them. I will take them out, and lay them on my son's grave."