Ilnney. CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 018115 »' Cornell University Library D 659.F8F69 Out of the ruins, 3 1924 015 563 434 DATE DUE mLM .„utt INTERUB RARY LOi VN MR |\LU L ^B 'kYLORD PRINTED INU..S.A. a Cornell University '3 Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 5563434 OUT OF THE RUINS French Official Photo. RHEIMS CATHEDRAL OUT OF THE RUINS BY GEORGE B. FORD AHEBICAN SED CROSS RECOMSTanCTION BUSEAU IN FRANCE ILLUSTRATED WITH MANY PHOTOGRAPHS NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1919 list, r 73 ^i- 5-^6 33 Copyright, 1919, by The Centuby Co. PuhUshed, Ootoher, 1919 -Xtm^^^^^^^'-"^^^ aU* PREFACE In the preparation of this book, as compara- tively few printed documents exist in which the facts about devastation and reconstruction are given, I have been obhged to collect most of my data at first hand through interviews with government officials and others who are particularly acflive in reconstruction work, and by making trips of observation from time to time through the devastated regions. Every- where I have been met with the greatest cour- tesy. Busy and overworked public servants of every grade have shown an eagerness to help me secure the needed facts, I cannot ex- press too strongly my appreciation of what they have done to make this book possible, and I wish to take this occasion to thank them for their generous collaboration. INTRODUCTION France has borne the brunt of the war. Over 1,400,000 of her best men have been killed — nearly half of the total lost by all of the Alhes exclusive of Russia. From being a creditor nation to the extent of thirty billion francs, she has become a debtor nation for a like amoxmt. Her best industrial and agri- cultural districts have been held by the enemy. Her foreign loans have yielded nothing; her best internal revenue has been cut off ; her fac- tories and mines have almost all worked for the war ; she has exported little ; the foreign ex- change has been constantly rising against her. Over half of all the destruction in the allied countries is in France alone and much the most difficult half at that. It is only natural that France has come out of the horrible anxiety and strain of the war tired beyond belief; and exhausted as she is she has to meet the overwhelming problem of get- viii INTRODUCTION ting back on her feet as soon as she can. Clemenceau has said that the problem of re- construction, in its broadest sense, is even more difficult than that of the war. And yet weary France is attacking this gi- gantic task with a covu-age and with a vision that you have but to realize to admire pro- foundly. She has the will to win the Peace. Give her time and she would come back with- out special outside help. However, neither France nor the Allies can afford to wait that long, for a slow revival will mean coimtless economic and social disturbances not only in France but reaetively tiiroughout the world. It is not only our moral obligation in the name of humanity to help France now, but it is to oiu" selfish advantage to do so to protect our own prosperity and social order. Only those who have been in constant con- tact with the problem in France can begin to appreciate the extent and the hideousness of the devastation Germany has caused in the fair nortiiern land of France. Only those who have gone out of their way to find out can realize the wonderful effort France is making tQ rise from the ruin?, Only careful study INTRODUCTION ix will show just how the Allies, in particular America, can help effectively and in a way that will be welcomed by France. It is to try to get at the truth in these matters that this book was written. Geoege B. Foed. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAFTEB PAGE V PKErACE I The Exodus The Evacuations — Refugee relief in the in- terior of France — Those that stayed behind — The Repatriates — Worls of the French local committees and the A. R. C. II Devastation 19 History — How distributed — Buildings — Pub- lic Works — Agriculture — Industry — Commerce — Furniture — Historical Monuments — Contin- gent Losses — Belgium — Italy — Serbia — Ruma^ nia — Poland. III The Retukn 64 After the Battle of the Marne in 1914— After the Battle of the Somme, 1917— After the final German retreat, 1918 — Summer of 1919. IV Public Relief 80 Development of Government Relief — The Army — The Ministry of Interior — The Minis- try of Liberated Regions — Service des Tra- vaux de Premiere Urgence. V Pkivate Relief 95 History — French, British, and American Re- lief Societies — ^Local Committees — Anglo- American Friends' Mission — American Com- mittee for Devastated France — Smith College Relief Unit — American Red Cross. xi xii CONTENTS CHAPXEE PAGE VI The State Pays All Wae. Damages . 1^ History — Principles — Operation. — Advances made before the law was voted — Present state. VII Recent Laws Affecting Reconsteuc- TION 14f4! Compulsory Town Planning law — Expropria- tion by Districts and Excess Benefit law — Reparceling of Rural Property — Sanitary laws. VIII Government Oeganization for Re- construction 155 History— Ministry of Interior — Ministry of Public Works — Ministry of Liberated Regions — Ministry of Industrial Reconstitution — Min- istry of Fine Arts — Parliamentary Committees — Local Services — Budgets. IX Private Organization and Effort . 222 Cooperative Societies — Syndicates — Purchasing Boards — Refugee Societies — Welfare Societies Health Groups — Professional organization — Business organization — ^Labor Unions — ^The In- dividual effort. X Results and Needs — ^American Col- laboration 241 Examples of progress from the Field— Needs and Projects — Health and Social Welfare — Adoption of Towns — Program of American Collaboration — Gigantic Task before France and her Heroic effort to meet it. Index 265 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Rheims Cathedral Frontispiece FAOINQ FAQB German defenses 52 Trees wantonly cut down by the Boches at Bouza Azette 52 Nieuport 63 A destroyed department store at Nancy . . 53 The Cathedral at Ypres 60 The old Town Hall at Rheims 61 The Cloth HaU at Ypres 61 A typical government portable town haU and school 84< A typical government portable hut .... 84 The interior of a portable hut for refugees . 85 The interior of a typical wooden hut ... 85 A home-made home at Esmery Hallon, Sonmie . 92 The only two homes in Nieuport in April, 1919 92 American Red Cross Warehouse Districts • . 93 A house destroyed by a nineteen-inch German shell 120 xiii xiv ILLUSTRATIONS PAOINQ PAGE A house repaired by the Friends .... 131 Refugees from the North in barracks at Dreux, Normandy 1^1 French architects and contractors in Paris in- vestigating ofBcial experimental construc- tion with mud 14<8 Official experimental farm buildings, made with mud walls — Paris 148 Official experiment with rough barn construction —Paris 149 A home of broken bricks and mud mortar, Es- mery Hallon, Somme 149 Rebuilding a store at Rheims 156 The baker's house at La Bassee 156 A house repaired by the American Red Cross . 157 Quimper, Brittany 157 The whole town of Dixmude in April, 1919 . . 196 House at Gruny repaired by Friends . . .196 A colony erected by the English Friends . . 197 Friends putting up one of their own portable huts 197 American Red Cross trucks unloading relief sup- plies at the Town Hall in Peronne . . 204 The living-quarters of the Smith College Relief Unit at Grecourt, Somme 204 ILLUSTRATIONS xv TAOINO PAGE Vitremont, Meurthe-et-Moselle 205 The traveling store of the Smith College Relief Unit at Canizy, Somme 205 Lens 244) Deserted medieval town of Concy-le-Chateau, Aisne 244 Noyon in 1919 245 Vitremont, Meurthe-et-Moselle 252 The carpenter shop of the American Committee for Devastated France, at Blerancourt, Aisne 252 Reclamation of land in the devastated region of France 253 OUT OF THE RUINS OUT OF THE RUINS CHAPTER I THE EXODUS In the early summer of 1914 it would have been hard to find a more smiling or a happier land than the region comprising the north of France and Belgium. With its large, sub- stantial, well-stocked barns, its fine herds of cattle, its factories humming night and day, its coal- and iron-mines swarming with workers, it was one of the richest and most prosperous parts of Europe. Many millions owed their bread to the wheat grown on its fertile acres. The black top-soil is often three, four, and even six feet deep, and so compact that even after months of drought it is moist and firm a few inches below the sur- face. When those of us who are farmers hear that the poorest of this land raised eighteen and twenty-five bushels to the acre and that the 3 4 OUT OF THE RUINS best raised fifty and sixty bushels to the acre, with an average of about thirty or thirty-two, we appreciate how important a part it must have played in the feeding of France and Bel- gium. Aside from the cereals, this coimtry was especially famous for its beet-sugar, for most of the supply of France came from here. All through the country districts one used to fimd great sugar-miUs, each fed by a large sur- rounding farm area. And consider its output of coal. Remem- ber that France produced 40,844,000 tons of coal before the war, about 3 per cent, of the world's production. (Belgium produced 22,000,000.) Yet out of these forty million tons, nearly thirty-two million of the best grade came from this northern district. All the cities and larger towns of the region were noted for their textile factories. When we learn that almost all of the linen manufac- ture of France, nearly all of its woolen-weav- ing, and two thirds of its cotton cloth came from the North, we begin to realize what an important part it played in the life of the country. THE EXODUS 5 The thing that used to surprise foreigners traveling through this region was its substan- tial character. Whether in the brick region of the North or the stone region of the East, even the most simple farm-hoiise or bam was built solidly of good masonry and had the air of being there for aU time. Even the working- men's houses around the mines and the fac- tories were substantially constructed, and while they often left much to be desired in the matter of sanitation, they at least were not flimsy or cheap-looking. There were fine roads everywhere — ^hard, smooth, level thor- oughfares, excellent for the farm truck or for the tourist's automobile. Everywhere there were double-track permanent railways, or, in the country districts, little narrow-gage roads which fed into the main lines. There was a complete network of canals throughout the country and new ones were constantly being built. Transportation was cheap and conven- ient. And everywhere there were beautiful works of art. Some of the most wonderful cathe- drals and churches of France were in that northern region. It is necessary only to men- 6 OUT OF THE RUINS tion the names of the cathedrals of Rheims, Amiens, Noyon, Beauvais, Laon, St. Quentin, and Soissons, to recall some of the most delight- ful memories of France. The charming town hall and arcaded square at Arras, the old Louis-Thirteenth town hall at Rheims, the fa- mous old fortresses at Coucy-le-Chateau, Ham, and Verdun, are among the most interesting monimients that have come down to us from the past. These and hxmdreds of others are all in this part of France. In August, 1914, the Germans swarmed over this smiling land, driving before them those who could get away, but coming so fast that the majority of its inhabitants did not have time to flee. During August and the first week in September, in 1914, over a million and a half persons, with the few belongings they could take with them, crowded the trains and other conveyances of every sort, or went on foot driving their cattle before them and carry- ing their possessions on wheelbarrows or in baby-carriages. All mixed up with them were the retreating troops and the wounded coming back from the front, or the fresh troops going THE EXODUS 7 forward to try to stem the invading tide. Every road was choked with pepple. The first of the population to be rolled back took refuge in the larger towns like Arras, St. Quentin, and Rheims, only to be driven out again to more distant ones, hke Amiens, Com- piegne, Chateau-Thierry, and Chalons-sur- Mame, whence once more they were driven back, into the interior of France. Himdreds of thousands crowded into Paris, then fled into the interior as the Germans came within shell- ing-distance of the city. Even the French Government moved to Bordeaux, and all through France every mode of locomotion was taxed to the utmost. The Ministry of the In- terior and a special civilian service of the Ministry of War took charge of the situation, rounded up the refugees as well as they could, and distributed them more or less evenly throughout the interior departments. The refugees who had relatives in the interior of France went directly to live with them; those who had plenty of money available took care of themselves; but nearly a million and a half refugees Ija^ tp be ta;k^n care of by th^ State, 8 OUT OF THE RUINS from the very beginning, and this number gradually increased to nearly two million be- fore the end of the war. The refugees were destitute. In 1918 1 saw seventy-five thousand of them pour through Paris in the last days of May and the first days of June, driven back by the German ad- vance at Chateau-Thierry. They arrived a thousand or fifteen hundred to a train at all hours of day and night, with the stations pitch- black while the air raids were going on: bent old men and women, children in arms, with goats and chickens and baby-carriages and endless bimdles — ^whatever they could manage to save and carry away with them. Most of them had only the clothes they wore. Many of them had ridden a day, or even two days, without food. They wandered about in a daze, quite helpless; most of them peasant farmers who had never in their lives been more than a few miles away from their homes. From the very beginning the French Parlia- ment voted emergency credits to take care of these refugees. In the autumn of 1914 a law was voted giving an allocation of 1 fr. 25 per day for adults and fr. 50 per day per child. THE EXODUS 9 In addition, special allocations were made for rent, sickness, and other things. Further- more, each prefet of each of the eighty-six de- partments of France was given an emergency fund with which to feed, clothe, shelter, and to provide furniture, coal, etc., for the refugees. The Ministry of the Interior Bureau, under Monsieur Ogier and his assistant Monsieur Imbert, distributed the refugees throughout the interior of France in proportion to the original number of inhabitants in a depart- ment. At first the allotment was about 1^ per cent, of the normal population, but as the new advances occui'red and as the repatriates came back through Switzerland, it was grad- ually increased to 3 per cent, or 4 per cent, generally, and in some departments 10, 12, and even 15 per cent, of the population were refu- gees. In their first onrush the Germans came so unexpectedly and so fast that most of the civil- ians in Belgium and over half of those in north- em France remained where they were and suf- fered four and a half years of German occupa- tion. We have heard countless stories of German atrocities, a great many of which ap- 10 OUT OF THE RUINS peao" to be true. The invaders did carry away everything that they could possibly use, and not only things of industrial, commercial, or art value; they even stripped the homes of furni- ture, utensils, clothing, etc. They did force a great many people to work for them, often as slaves; they did drive a number of men and women back into Germany; they were con- stantly punishing or shooting those who stood out against their whims. But one of their most dastardly crimes was their wholesale starving of the children of the North. A thor- ough medical investigation recently made in Lille, the biggest manufacturing city of the North — with two hundred and eighteen thou- sand inhabitants before the war — shows that of the children between six and thirteen years of age, of whom over sixteen thousand stayed through the occupation, to-day more than 70 per cent, are either tubercular or so under-de- veloped that their condition is dangerous. Hundreds of children are no larger or heavier than they were five years ago. This is due solely and exclusively to deliberate starvation at the hands of the Germans. When the Germans were pushed back in thq THE EXODUS 11 spring of 1917 in the Somme, the Aisne,, and the Oise, several hundred thousand of these civilian prisoners were uncovered and sent back into the interior of France, where they added to the congestion already existing there. To be sure, most of them, as well as many of those who were evacuated in 1914, sought refuge in the departments just west and south of the war zone, that they might rush back to their homes as soon as the Germans were driven out. This meant a special congestion in the cities and larger towns in all of the region just back of the war zone. Some of these cities — with the billeting of troops, the housing of munition workers, and the influx of refugees — ^had a population over double that which they had before the war and all without any new buildings being erected to accommodate the new-comers. This was especially true in places like Troyes, Dijon, Beauvais, Rouen, and Bourges. During the latter years of the war, as the Germans began to feel the pinch of starvation themselves, they evacuated large numbers of the French civilian prisoners through Ger- many and Switzerland ^nd §0 into France, 12 OUT OF THE RUINS During 1918 they sent them back in train- loads — ^men, wonien, and children — at the rate of one thousand to two thousand a day. In aU, up to the signing of the armistice, nearly five himdred thousand persons had been sent back in this way. The Swiss Government and Swiss charitable societies took wonderful care of them as they were passing through, while expediting their journey across Switzerland as much as possible. The repatriates entered France at Evian-les-Bains, on the border of Lake Geneva. There, the Casino was turned into a great hospitable receiving-station, where the people were given a glowing welcome home and medical attention, money, food, clothing, anything that they had to have immediately. There was also a great system of card-cata- logues by means of which the repatriates could get in touch with their relatives or friends in France, and vice versa. The repatriates spent only a day or two at most at Evian. If they had relatives or friends who would take care of them they were allowed to go directly to them by themselves ; but all the rest of the repatriates were sent in blocks of nine hundred first to one department THE EXODUS 18 and then to another, in the interior of France, wherever the local authorities could best absorb and take care of them. Since the armistice most of the people who were in the invaded regions during the Ger- man occupation have stayed on where they were, unless their homes were too badly dam- aged, in which case they went on into the in- terior of France. At the same time a great many of the repatriates released from Ger- many, stopped off at their homes in the lib- erated regions, but many had to come on into the uninvaded portion of the country because nothing was left for them to hve in. The re- turning military prisoners went directly to their homes, wherever these were in France. All of these things combined would have meant a considerable increase in the popula- tion in the interior of France except for the fact that, since the armistice, many hundred thousands of refugees have returned to the lib- erated regions. Even so, in the devastated villages not over one third of the original popu- lation has yet come back. There are to-day nearly a million and a third refugees and repatriates outside the former war zone. 14 OUT OF THE RUINS most of them waiting for a chance to get back. All along the Ministry of the Interior, working through the prefets and sous-prefets of the seventy-odd departments outside the war zone, have done everything they could to ease the lot of the refugees. Considering the strain they have been under for nearly five years, the officials and citizens of the thirty- thousand-odd towns throughout the interior of France have been remarkably patient with this influx of "Foreigners," as they call the refu- gees, for nowhere in France is there a village or a hamlet so small but it has had to billet its quota of these unfortunates. When a prefet of a department received word from the Ministry of the Interior that on such and such a date he would receive a train- load of refugees — that is, about nine hun- dred or a thousand of them — ^he would prepare a receiving- and sorting-station, where they could be lodged and fed until they could be dis- tributed throughout the department. Then he would get in touch through the sous-prefets with the mayors of the five or six himdred com- munes within his department and find out how many each could care for, and if the train-load THE EXODUS 15 di refugees could be divided up and one car- load sent here and another sent there directly, the matter would be arranged that way by preference; but if, as was more usually the case, more time was needed in which to prepare permanent lodging for the refugees, they would be held at the central receiving-station often for several weeks before they could be sent on. The prefets and mayors requisitioned many apartment houses and other buildings for the refugees. However, in March and May, 1918, when the great German drives rolled back so many people into the interior, the hous- ing problem became very acute. The Minis- try of the Interior was obliged to make emer- gency arrangements with the Ministry of War for the assignment of four hundred army bar- racks, each twenty feet wide by a hundred feet long, and nine hundred portable houses, each with two rooms and a shed. The Ministry of War put these barracks up, usually in colonies, wherever the prefets of the departments felt they were most needed. The biggest of these colonies were at Quimper, in the Finistere, where the authorities were prepared to lodge 16 OUT OF THE RUINS two thousand, five hundred refugees at a time. In these colonies there were usually common kitchens and dining-rooms, work-rooms, recre- ation-rooms, chapels, hospitals, and dispensa- ries ; in fact, everything necessary to community life. In addition the prefets distributed clothes, special food, money, and anything absolutely needed for the refugees' existence and health. Carrying on this work on so enormous a scale, with only a small amoxmt of help available, the Government could do no more than supply the bare necessities. Wonders were accomplished in the supplying of things essential to exist- ence, but naturally very little could be done to help the refugees really to live in comfort and enjoyment. It was in helping out with these various extras — the things that made the difference between living and merely existing; the things that were needed to keep up the morale — that the several French and foreign charitable societies did so much good work. Up to the simmier of 1917 this work was done by a nvmiber of French, British, and American societies; but then, when conditions were becoming more and more acute, and the THE EXODUS 17 morale was getting lower and lower, the Amer- ican Red Cross came into the field and organ- ized a huge service for the care of the refugees, under Dr. Edward T. Devine and Mr. Homer Folks. They organized a corps of workers in every department of France and, in direct col- laboration with the prefets and the local au- thorities, they distributed enormous quantities of food, clothing, utensils, furniture, and tools ; they helped to find work for thousands of refu- gees; they helped the farmers to get agricul- ture started, and found homes or improved the lodging for some twenty thousand persons. In scores of the larger centers, where no lo- cal committee existed for taking care of the refugees, the American Red Cross organized one and then proceeded to work through that committee. The French authorities have paid an overwhelming tribute to the American Red Cross and other societies for the wonderful helping hand they gave during this emergency, and in particular for the effect their assistance had on the morale of the refugees who were so fast becoming discouraged. With very few exceptions the farmers who were driven out of the North wanted and still 18 OUT OF THE RUINS want to get back as soon as they can. A large proportion of them own more or less property, and their only wish in hfe is to return to it. Most of the industrial population, even, is try- ing to get back as soon as it can, despite the fact that many of these people have been mak- ing a good living in the interior during the war. Their relatives and friends are in the North, ■and they stiU feel hke strangers among the people of the West and South of France, where customs and manners and even speech are so different. There seems to be a very general feeling that almost every one from the undestroyed parts of the hberated regions wiU return to their homes; and to the destroyed parts of the hb- erated regions, where some two and a half mil- lion people lived before the war, it is estimated that from 80 to 85 per cent, of the original iahabitants will go back. CHAPTER II DEVASTATION Those who visited Rheims before the war re- member it as a charming city of one hundred and fifteen thousand inhabitants, full of Hfe and activity, centering about its wonderful cathedral. To-day it is like a buried city of the past. Of its fourteen thousand buildings nine thou- sand have completely disappeared, except for an occasional gaping party wall. The other five thousand buildings have all been badly damaged and in the case of most of them it is a great question whether or not they can even be repaired. All of the great textile factories which were the life of Rheims are gone — ^just a mass now of brick and wood and rusty iron. When the people began to come back after the Germans had been driven away, they found nothing — no water-supply; no electricity; the railroads destroyed, and also the canals; no 19 20 OUT OF THE RUINS sanitary arrangements ; nothing but the bleach- ing bones of the town, and over all the mar- tyred cathedral, perhaps more beautiful than ever in its mutilation, a monument to German barbarity. The little village of Grecourt in the Somme, the headquarters of the Smith College Relief Unit, had only forty-seven inhabitants before the war; when the Germans were driven out in the spring of 1917 the Allies found no inhab- itant left in the town. The invaders had driven into Ham and Nesle those that had stayed through the German occupation, and then had burned and dynamited all the build- ings. There were about five hundred acres of cultivable land in the town, which was left in. fairly good condition; but by the twentieth of July in 1917 only thirteen inhabitants had re- turned and they had succeeded in getting about seventy-five acres back into use. Virtually aU of their trees had been destroyed except a few along the roadside. All their farm animals had been taken away and all their farming- implements destroyed. The Germans swept over the region again in the spring of 1918. Hard fighting took DEVASTATION 21 place there as they were being driven out in the summer of the same year. When we saw it again after the armistice not a building was left standing; even the charming little brick church was gone; fields were full of trenches and shell-holes and masses of barbed-wire en- tanglement, and the debris of battle was scat- tered everywhere. Early in the spring of 1919 I stood at a cross-roads in the center of Lens, formerly a bustling mining-city of thirty-two thousand in- habitants. Not a person was in sight; the city was dead; in every direction I could see the horizon, except where it was broken by an oc- casional twisted mass of rusty iron, all that was left of a factory or of pit-head machinery ; not even the party walls were standing. I was told that about one hundred of its people had crawled back and were living as best they could in cellars and improvised lean-tos- One day in the winter of 1918-19 I walked across from what had been the busy manufac^ turing city of Chauny to the fascinating medieval hilltop town of Coucy-le-Chateau. I passed through three or four picturesque stone villages and the deep forest of Coucy. There 22 OUT OF THE RUINS was hardly any one in Cliauny, for the whole city had been systematically and thoroughly blown up by the Germans before they left. Of the great glass-works of St. Gobain nothing whatever was left. All the afternoon, alone, I walked through this beautiful country. Ev- ery field was pitted with shell-holes, or criss- crossed with trenches ; every home was a mold- ering heap of stones; there was hardly a tree that was not more or less shattered; everywhere were the litter and waste of battle. Not a hv- ing creature of any sort did I meet; there were even no birds. Not a motor-car or a wagon passed me on the road; around me was utter' desolation. It seemed hopeless when one real- ized that there were 3,400 of these towns de- stroyed to a greater or less degree, that over 240,000 buildings are destroyed beyond any hope of repair, and that 170,000 more are badly damaged — almost as many buildings as there are in the whole of greater New York. The devastated area in France and Belgium is almost as large as the entire state of Massa- chusetts or New Jersey. It covers something more than 7,000 square miles, of which over 600 square miles are in Belgium. That makes DEVASTATION 23 the devastated area in France alone larger than the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island together; while the entire liberated area in France is nearly equal to the combined area of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecti- cut. The population of the liberated area of France was nearly 5,000,000 before the war; and that of the devastated region in Belgium about 300,000. In France the total popula- tion of the 2,000 devastated towns and villages was nearly 2,500,000 before the war; up to July, 1919, not much over a third of the inhab- itants of the destroyed towns had been able to come back. A few months ago I came down over the Passchendaele Ridge, looking for the town of Poelkappelle ; all of the country around in ev- ery direction was a billowy sea of shell-holes and trenches, the shell-holes often so close together that one could not walk between them. I came to a cross-roads where there was a great British tank half buried in the mud, and to my surprise I discovered that I was in the very center of what had been the town of Poelkap- pelle. Even the ruins of the houses were so 24 OUT OF THE RUINS churned into the soil that the land appeared in no way different from the country round about. The only living thing as far as the eye could see in that great waste was a lone man digging. He was trying to find the silver he had buried in his garden, but he said he had no idea where to begin his search ; he did not know where his garden had been; he could not guess where his house had stood, nor, for that matter, where his street had run. It was in Rheims that I was standing before a house which had fallen into its cellar, when a poilu came up out of the ruins. I asked him if the home was his, and he said it was. He was just seeing it for the first time since the war; but he smiled and said: "I am much better off than many, because at least I have a sub-cellar left to me." It is interesting to see how the destruction is distributed through the liberated regions and how it differs in character from one region to another. The worst havoc is not necessarily where there was the hardest fighting; it is rather in the industrial towns behind the lines, such as DEVASTATION 25 Lens, Chauny, and Tergnier, where the invad- ers had the time scientifically to blow up every building, that we find the structin-es com- pletely flattened down. The Mayor of Chauny told me that a few days before the fenemy was driven out of the town, some Ger- man engineers came to his house and asked to be taken down into the cellar. There they sounded the floor, walls, and ceiling, and made a number of measurements; then they left, never saying a word. Just before the Ger- mans left the town, all the inhabitants were taken to a few houses on its western edge; meanwhile the German engineers placed a carefully calculated charge of dynamite in just the right spot in the cellar of each house and then blew them all up. Hardly a party wall stands to-day. As the Germans withdrew they proceeded to shell the houses in which they had left the inhabitants. In towns destroyed by shell fire, such as Rheims, Verdun, or a vil- lage like Vaux, which was wrecked by Ameri- can artillery, even where the firing was the heaviest, there are usually parts of some party walls standing. Up to the time the Germans were driven 26 OUT OF THE RUINS back in the spring of 1917 there was compara- tively little destruction, except right along the firing-line. Also there was a fringe of destruc- tion along the line where the Germans were held and turned back in the Battle of the Marne in September, 1914. This fringe, which was rarely over five or ten miles wide, extended aU the way from Meaux along through Sezanne, Vitry-le-Fran9ois, and Revigny, and included a number of the little farm-villages which, as we shall see later on, have done so much in the way of reconstruction. This line went on through Verdun and St. Mihiel, north of Nancy, and on down to Vitrimont, Gerbeviller, St. Die, etc., to Thann in Alsace. All of these towns are more or less destroyed; Gerbeviller, in particular, which the Germans took the time systematically to burn. In a report by the Ministry of the Interior, issued June 16, 1916, we find that in the Marne there were 258 communes damaged, with about 3,500 buildings completely destroyed and nearly 12,000 partly destroyed. There were still 40 communes in the hands of the Germans. In the Meuse, there were still 236 communes within the German lines: and on the French DEVASTATION 27 side of the lines 59 communes were damaged, with 1,800 buildings entirely destroyed and about 700 partially. In the Meurthe-et-Mo- selle, there were 109 communes damaged, with 1,685 buildings entirely destroyed and 3,245 partially destroyed, and 205 communes still in the hands of the Germans. In the Vosges, we find 53 communes damaged, with a total of 1,256 buildings entirely gone, and nearly 2,000 badly damaged, and 26 communes still in the hands of the Germans. In the Marne, already over 56 per cent, of its communes were badly damaged. When the Germans were driven back in the Somme, the Aisne, and the Oise, in the spring of 1917, they started their campaign of sys- tematic destruction. In the first part of their retreat, especially in the Oise and the southern part of the Somme, they were moving so rap- idly that they could do httle more than pillage and bum; but in the latter half of their retreat they had had the time systematically to burn and blow up almost every town. Thus most of the towns east of Bapaume, Peronne, and Ham were completely destroyed. West of this hne many buildings were repaired during 28 OUT OF THE RUINS 1917 with a little tarred paper on the roof and oiled paper in the windows, but east of this line the only thing that could be done was to put up portable barracks. In a report published by the Ministry of the Interior, on July 24, 1917, we find that the Allied advance in the spring of 1917 freed 499 communes from the enemy, thereby rediic- ing the number of communes remaining in the hands of the Germans, from 2,554 to 2,055. This report covers an investigation made in 1,223 communes in eleven departments, and does not include 450 communes that were still under fire and could not be investigated. The report of June 16, 1916, covered 754 com- munes; the 1917 report shows 102,697 build- ings damaged as compared with a total of 46,263 in the 1916 report. In 1917 fully half of the buildings were completely destroyed. We find, too, that over 527 commimes had more than half of their buildings completely destroyed. In 400 communes, over 80 per cent, of the buildings had been damaged. There were 435 town halls destroyed, 600 schools, 472 churches, and 877 other public buildings. The report included 414 factories DEVASTATION 29 of various sorts which had employed at least 105,000 persons. Then came the big German advances of March and May, 1918, with a new fringe of towns destroyed along the battle line, running through Albert, Montdidier, Noyon, Chateau- Thierry, and Dormans. At the same time the enemy caused great de- struction behind the Allied hues by long-range shell fire and by aeroplane bombing at Dun- kerque, Hazebrouck, Bethune, Arras, Amiens, Compiegne, Epernay, Rheims, Verdun, Toul, Nancy, and Belfort. It was at this time, too, that Paris was shelled by the long-range guns. To be sure, there had been some long-range shelling previously, especially in Belfort, Nancy, Bar-le-Duc, and Dunkerque. There are hundreds of other towns and vil- lages well behind the Allied hues that have received the visits of German bombing-planes, but despite the considerable damage that was done, fortunately hardly one of the famous buildings of France was seriously damaged. The greatest destruction of all occurred as the Germans were driven back in the summer of 1918. They evidently felt that all was lost and 30 OUT OF THE KUINS that the time had come to harm France eco- nomically as much as they could. It was then that they carried out feverishly their long-pre- pared plans of systematic pillage and destruc- tion: every piece of furniture and clothing, every trinket and work of art, all copper and brass, every machine or every part of a ma- chine, all cattle and farming-implements, any- thing that could be of any use in Germany, they carried off. Everything that was not car- ried off, if it could be of economic use to France, they destroyed. It was then that they burned and blew up the factories and flooded the mines. It was then that they sci- entifically destroyed the industrial towns. Between July, 1918, and the armistice on November 11, 1918, the Allies won back from Germany nearly 8,050 square miles of land in France, an area almost as large as that of Del- aware, Connecticut, and Rhode Island com- bined ; this is about 4 per cent, of the total area of France, including as it does about 2,000 communes with a pre-war population of nearly 8,000,000. It is interesting to compare this with the German advance in March and May, 1918, DEVASTATIOl^r 31 which covered a strip about 140 miles long by a maximum width of about 40 miles, and con- tained somewhat over 2,300 square miles and about 700 commimes. The AUied advance in March, 1917, covered a front of about 150 miles with a maximum depth of about 25 miles, and included an area of about 1,550 square miles with 500 com- munes. This area had a total population of about 325,000. The total area in France invaded by the Germans in August and September, 1914, was over 15,000 square miles; or something over 7 per cent, of the coimtry's entire area. It in- cluded over 3,400 communes, with a total pop- ulation of nearly 5,000,000. This area is larger than that of Maryland and Delaware, together, or that of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined. The actual devastated area of France covers approximately 6,300 square miles or nearly 3 per cent, of the country's area. In December, 1918, M. Louis Dubois re- ported to the French Chamber of Deputies that the total war damage in France, not including commercial exploitation losses. 32 OUT OF THE RUINS amounted to sixty-four and a half billion francs, of which ten billion francs was the agri- cultural damage, twenty billion for buildings, five billion for furniture, twenty billion for in- dustry and mining, and nine and a half bil- lion for transportation. In February, 1919, he made a much more detailed report to the Chamber, putting the total damage in France at 119,801,000,000 francs, of which 35,446,000,000 francs were for buildings, public works, and other fixed struc- tures ; 32,352,000,000 francs for furniture, ma- chinery, tools, implements, etc.; 28,751,000,000 francs for raw materials, manufactured mate- rials, and supplies; and 23,242,000,000 francs for revenue or exploitation losses. Most of the following figures are taken from this later report of Monsieur Dubois and are checked up by recent official investigations of the Ministry of Industrial Reconstitution and the Ministry of Liberated Regions. Of the buildings wrecked 240,000 are en- tirely destroyed; 170,000 are more or less re- parable. To-day it will cost to replace the former 13,600,000,000 francs; to repair the lat- ter will cost at least 5,000,000,000 francs. To DEVASTATION 33 repair the pubEc buildings and historical mon- uments will cost 3,900,000,000 francs more, or a total of 22,500,000,000 francs; that is over $4,000,000,000 only for repairing or recon- structing destroyed buildings. It is estimated that the loss of rent on these buildings alone amounts to over 800,000,000 francs a year. On December 26, 1918, Monsieur ViUemia, the President of the National Federation of Builders, reported to the Office du Batiment et des Travaux Publics that clearing up the ruins of the buildings would alone amount to 2,209,- 000,000 francs. At increased present-day costs this will amount to at least 2,500,000,000 francs, which added to the cost of reconstruct- ing buildings makes the total cost of replacing them at least 25,000,000,000 francs; or over $4,500,000,000. He also reckoned that to re- construct all of these buildings in five years would take about 812,000 men per year, with- out including those engaged in clearing up the ruins or putting the soil into shape for use, or any of those employed on public works. As has been said, the Germans everywhere carried off any furniture, furnishings, or household utensils that they thought they could U OUT OF THE RUINS use, and they broke or burned the rest. The insurance companies estimate the damage at about ten bilhon francs. In regard to agriculture the ten depart- ments invaded by Germany were among the very richest in France. About three quarters of the land was tillable and most of the rest was good for hay or pasturage. According to a report made in May, 1918, by the Office de Reconstitution Agricole to the Minister of Liberated Regions, these ten departments pro- duced in 1913 over 4,000,000,000 francs' worth of crops. The average yield in this region was about 32 bushels of wheat to the acre, drop- ping down to 22 and 17 bushels to the acre in the eastern parts of the zone. These depart- ments contained about 15 per cent, of the whole tillable area of France, and the crops amounted to about 20 per cent, of the total. The farm- ing population in this region was about 807,- 000, which was about 10 per cent, of the effec- tive farming population of France. The invaded region furnished one fourth of the sugar-beets of France, one tenth of the oftts, one tenth of the wheat, one tenth of the DEVASTATION 35 fodder-beets, two thirds of the hops, and over one-fourth of the flax. In this region there are about 250,000 farms; of these 110,000 contained less than 2y2 acres apiece; 100,000 contained between 2% and 25 acres; about 26,000 between 25 and 100 acres; and there were about 5,500 farms with over 100 acres. Contrary to the usual custom in France many of these farms belong to people working in factories, which fact accounts for the large proportion of small farms. With values as they were in 1913 the capital invested in these farms was about 2,000,000,000 francs, or about 8,000 francs per farm. It can be safely said that the value of these farms has increased 2^/2 times since 1913, which would make them worth to-day over 2,500,000,000 francs. In the invaded departments there were about 5,000,000 acres of tillable land, a little over 1,000,000 acres of pasturage, 50,000 acres of market-gardens, 28,000 acres of vineyards, 125,000 acres of parks and gardens, 200,000 acres of other types of land, and 1,500,000 acres of wood and forest land, or approxi- 36 OUT OF THE RUINS mately 6,500,000 acres of cultivable land, and 1,500,000 acres of forest land. That is to say, the cultivable land alone is equal in area to the states of New Jersey and Delaware put to- gether, while the forest land alone is about equal in extent to the entire state of Delaware. Over 250,000 acres of arable land have been so churned up that they will have to be aban- doned or reforested. Before the war these were worth 240,000,000 francs ; to-day they are worth at least 360,000,000 francs. Two million acres more have depreciated at least one half in value, because they are so cut up with trenches and shell-holes. This means a loss of 1,336,000,000 francs. Fxu-thermore, to make this land fit for cultivation will cost 160 francs an acre, or about 324,000,000 francs. The rest of the land in the war zone — some- thing over 4,000,000 acres of tillable land — represents a cost of 280 francs per acre to bring the land back under cultivation, or 1,214,000,- 000 francs in all. Thus, the total loss on rural property, exclusive of buildings, is 3,234,000,- 000 francs. In the devastated regions about one half of DEVASTATION 37 the farm-buildings have been entirely de- stroyed; one quarter more are partially de- stroyed. To-day it would cost to replace these buildings 3,726,000,000 francs, of which 1,800,- 000,000 francs were included in the appraisal made above for buildings in general. About 80 per cent, of the farm implements were lost. Before the war it would have cost about 200 francs per acre to replace these im- plements; to-day it will cost about 600 francs per acre to replace them; or in all 3,186,000,- 000 francs. In December, 1918, the Office of- Agricul- tural Reconstitution showed that to replace the losses in the devastated regions they would need 51,000 side-hill plows, 33,000 other plows, 56,000 cultivators, 30,000 mowing-machines, 115,000 farm wagons, 88,000 harrows, 50,000 rollers, 48,000 hoes, 36,000 seed-drills, 13,000 fertilizers, 16,000 beet-extractors, 21,000 win- nowing-machines, 18,000 horse-rakes, 32,000 reapers and binders, 53,000 root-cutters, etc. With regard to animals, in comparing the statistics of 1913 and 1915, we find that whereas in 1913 there were 607,000 horses in the invaded departments, in 1915 there were 38 OUT OF THE RUINS only 242,000. On July 16, 1919, the Minister of Liberated Regions reported that in his ter- ritory 358,000 horses had been lost, 2,600 mules, 9,000 asses, 841,000 head of cattle, 944,- 000 sheep, and 424,000 pigs. It is asserted that in all 90 per cent, of the farm animals are lost. The total loss is over 2,090,000,000 francs. The crops lost would be worth to-day 880 francs per acre, instead of about 400 francs per acre as before the war; this means a loss of 5,839,000,000 francs. It is reckoned that at least 1,300,000 acres of wheat have been lost, and over 850,000 acres of hay. Furthermore, on the land there has been a loss of revenue of 30 francs per acre over seven years, and on exploitation capital a loss of 34 francs per acre, which means a total for the two of 2,972,000,000 francs. The 9,000 acres of hunting-land in the re- gion have sustained a direct loss of 20,000,000 francs, and a revenue loss of 17,000,000 francs. Fishing and fish-preserving cover 28,000 acres of water-courses and 40,000 acres of ponds and lakes. The direct loss is 68,000,000 francs and the revenue loss is 15,000,000 francs. DEVASTATION^ 39 The water-courses and canals, through lack of care and up-keep, have undergone direct and indirect losses of 66,000,000 francs. Of the woods and forests which covered about 1,500,000 acres and were worth before the war 800,000,000 francs, about three quar- ters have been destroyed. It will cost at pres- ent prices about 200,000,000 francs to reforest. In addition, the levehng off of 500,000 acres of woodland that has been badly churned up, and its reforestation, will cost 100,000,000 francs. Patching up the forest roads wiU cost 50,000,- 000 francs. The timber that was already cut and which has been lost, was worth another 50,000,000 francs. The income loss on these 500,000 acres is about 60,000,000 francs, and during the next fifty years there will be an ad- ditional loss of fully 200,000,000 francs. This makes the total loss in forests and lumber equal to 1,400,000,000 francs. Before the war France used 59,407,000 tons* of coal a year, and 9,166,000 tons more of coke equivalent. France herself produced 40,844,- 000 tons of coal and 5,357,000 tons of coke * Wherever "tons'' are spoken of in this text, the metric ton is meant. It equals 2,204.6 pounds; .984 long tons, or 1.1Q3 sjio^t ^oqs. 40 OUT OF THE RUINS equivalent. Of this amount 27,389,000 tons came from the Valenciennes basin. In all, the invaded regions furnished over 70 per cent, of the coal mined in France. It was the best quahty at that. About 140,000 men were em- ployed in the mines in the invaded regions, out of 203,208 for all of France. To-day if you go to the coal town of Lens, you will find every pit and gallery fiUed with water, sometimes to a depth of seven hundred feet. Every piece of coal-handling machinery has been dyna- mited. It wiU take 330,000 working-days at a cost of 495,000,000 francs to put the mines back into condition for use; the materials used in this will cost about 500,000,000 francs. The coal-mining buildings which were about 80 per cent, destroyed, wiU cost 440,000,000 francs to replace. The coal-handling machinery, also about 80 per cent, destroyed, wiU cost 1,404,- 000,000 francs to replace to-day. The Ger- mans also stole about 400,000,000 francs' worth of coal in stock. The exploitation loss over ten years amounts to 1,016,000,000 francs. Thus, for coal alone, the total loss amounts to 4,260,000,000 francs. DEVASTATION 41 In 1913 France produced 21,918,000 tons of iron ore, of which the Briey and Longwy basins, in the Meurthe-et-Moselle, furnished 19,629,000 tons, or 90 per cent, of the total. Almost all of this area was in the hands of the Germans. About 150,000 people were dependent on the mines for their livehhood. By comparison, it is interesting to note that the United States fin-nished at the same time 63,000,000 tons of iron ore, and Germany 35,- 941,000 tons. Before the war 55 per cent, of the steel manufactured in France came from the invaded regions; that is, about 3,000,000 tons. The same percentage apphes to cast- iron. The mines are not totally wrecked, although two are filled with water and the machinery of others has been destroyed. One third of the ovens can be put back into use very quickly by the replacing of pipes, valves, etc., stolen by the Germans ; a second one third have had their blowers stolen; the other one third are utterly ruined. All of the steel-mills and rolling-mills, with one or two exceptions, are entirely destroyed. It will cost 4,671,000,000 francs to replace 42 OUT OF THE RUINS their machinery, and 162,000,000 francs to re- place the mining-machinery. Putting the mines themselves back into condition for use will cost 144,000,000 francs ; and replacing the mining-buildings and steel-mills will cost 1,281,000,000 francs. The ore stolen was worth 36,000,000 francs, while to replace the material in the mills will cost 1,800,000,000 francs. The exploitation loss over six years amounts to 285,000,000 francs for the mines and 2,752,000,000 francs for the miUs. Thus, we can say that the iron-mining industry has suffered a total loss of 627,000,000 francs and the steel- and iron-mills have lost, in all, 10,- 504,000,000 francs. The foundries and smaller iron-working shops are also 80 per cent, destroyed and rep- resent a loss of about 736,000,000 francs. The raw and fabricated material represents a loss of another 300,000,000 francs. The building loss is 230,000,000 francs. The exploitation loss over six years is 540,000,000 francs. This means a total of 1,806,000,000 francs. The mechanical and electrical industry was about 90 per cent, destroyed. To replace the mstchinery will cost 1,269,000,000 francs; the DEVASTATION 43 raw and manufactured material represents a loss of 1,350,000,000 francs; the building loss is 420,000,000 francs ; the exploitation loss over six years is 855,000,000 francs: a total of 3,894*000,000 francs. Eighty per cent, of the electric power-plants were destroyed, which represents a machinery loss of 360,000,000 francs, with 63,000,000 'francs for the buildings and 143,000,000 francs' exploitation loss : a total of 566,000,000 francs. The chemical industry in the devastated re- gions also was about 80 per cent, destroyed, which represents a loss of 1,423,000,000 francs for the machinery; 1,600,000,000 francs for materials; 267,000,000 francs for the build- ings ; and 882,000,000 francs' exploitation loss : a total of 4,172,000,000 francs for the chemical industry. The glass industry represents a machinery loss of 135,000,000 francs; a material loss of 125,000,000 francs; a building loss of 65,000,- 000 francs ; and an exploitation loss of 82,000,- 000 francs: a total of 407,000,000 francs. The mines and quarries produced in 1914, 4,000,000 tons of material. Their mg,chinery 44 OUT OF THE RUINS loss represents 36,000,000 francs; their mate- rials, 15,000,000; buildings, 9,000,000; and ex- ploitation loss 19,000,000: a total of 79,000,000 francs. For comparison it is interesting to turn back to a report made by the Minister of the In- terior on October 25, 1916, on building-mate- rials destroyed that would have to be replaced. The report was made for 41,223 buildings at that time totally or partially destroyed. To- day the total building-damage shows almost exactly ten times as many buildings destroyed, and therefore we are multiplying each of the figures given in this report by ten, with the following results: Nearly 40,000,000 cubic yards of masonry have been destroyed; 17,- 000,000 cubic yards of stone; 55,000,000 bricks; 3,000,000 tons of lime; 2,000,000,000 feet of lumber; 330,000 tons of steel; 910,000,- 000 roofing-tiles; and 320,000,000 roofing- slates. The invaded regions were the center of the textile industry of France. In fact, their an- nual exploitation of 635,000,000 francs' worth of raw material and 1,314,000,000 francs' worth of manufactured products, was nearly a DEVASTATION 45 third of the total exploitation of all sorts in France, which amounted in all to 6,324,000,000 francs. Almost all of the wool-combing in France (that is, the work of 2,000 machines) was in the devastated regions. Out of 2,365,000 wool-spindles, over 2,000,000 were in the in- vaded districts. Almost all of the 55,000 linen-looms and of the 550,000 linen-spindles were destroyed or carried away. Of the 712,- 600 carded- wool spindles in France, only half are left. Of the 7,525,000 cotton-spindles, over 4,000,000 are gone. The 15,000 cotton- looms, 16,700 linen-looms, and 12,000 other looms in the devastated regions are all gone, the Germans having destroyed what they did not take away. Armentieres, with its 40 spin- ning- and weaving-mills, has almost nothing capable of functioning to-day. The combing-machinery represents a loss of 292,000,000 francs; the buildings, 30,000,000; the raw and finished products 2,460,000,000; the exploitation loss 468,000,000: a total of 3,250,000,000 francs. To replace the combed-wool spinning- machinery will cost 247,000,000 francs; the 46 OUT OF THE RUINS carded-wool spinning-machinery will cost 84,- 000,000 francs; the cotton spinning-machin- ery will cost 525,000,000 francs; the linen and jute spinning-machinery will cost 396,000,000 francs. Tha/t is, there was a total of 1,252,- 000,000 francs lost on spinning-machinery. The loss of raw materials and finished prod- ucts in wool, cotton, and linen, amoxmts, at to- day's prices, to 7,394,000,000 francs. The ex- ploitation loss over six years for the three in- dustries amounts to 1,745,000,000 francs; while the buildings, which are not totally wrecked, represent a loss of only 146,000,000 francs. The largest single item in this list is the losis of raw and manufactured cotton, which amoimts to 4,800,000,000 francs. Thus, the total loss . to the textile-spinning industry is 18,787,000,- 000 francs. The various weaving-looms are from 60 to 90 per cent, destroyed. The wool-looms it will cost 225,000,000 francs to replace; the cotton-looms, 76,000,000 francs; the linen- looms, 108,000,000; and the lace-looms 130,- 000,000 francs; or a total of 539,000,000 francs. DEVASTATION 47 In the wool industry there was a loss on raw and manufactured products of 2,925,000,000 francs. Adding in similar losses in the other weaving industries, we have a total loss of weaving raw and manufactured products of 4,591,000,000 francs. The building losses in these districts amount to only 88,000,000 francs ; while the exploitation losses amount to 723,000,000 francs. Thus, the total loss to the weaving industry is 5,941,000,000 francs. In the bleaching, dyeing, and ironing plants, which were about 80 per cent, destroyed, there was a loss of 189,000,000 francs on machinery; 140,000,000 on materials; 49,000,000 of build- ings ; and an exploitation loss of 198,000,000 ; or a total of 576,000,000 francs. This makes a total loss for the textile indus- try in buildings, machinery, raw and manufac- tured material, and exploitation, of 20,304,- 000,000 francs. It is only when we go through, one after another, the factory dis- tricts of the big industrial towns of the North, and see everj'^ factory, almost without excep- tion, cleared bare, gutted, or blown up, and thousands of the employees' homes destroyed 48 OUT OF THE RUINS as well, that we can begin to appreciate the horrible calamity that has come over northern France. Before the war, there were 206 sugar-mills in France, which produced, in 1913, 864,815 tons of sugar. The German invasion left only 61 of these in operation in all of France. These 61 gradually increased their production from 133,000 tons in 1915 to 197,000 tons in 1918. The rest of the mills were 90 per cent, destroyed. The replacing of their machinery will cost 364,000,000 francs ; the materials 90,- 000,000; the buildings 261,000,000; and the exploitation loss over eight years will be 290,- 000,000: a total of 1,015,000,000 francs for the sugar industry. The distilleries and other agricultural indus- tries represent a loss of 362,000,000 francs in machinery; 87,000,000 francs in materials; 81,- 000,000 francs in buildings; and 231,000,000 francs in exploitation; or 761,000,000 francs in all. There were 1,700 breweries in the in- vaded regions which were about 80 per cent, destroyed. These breweries produced 317,- 000,000 gallons of beer before the war. To replace their machinery will cost 329,000,000 DEVASTATION 49 francs; their materials 75,000,000; their build- ings 57,000,000 ; and their exploitation loss will be 155,000,000: a total loss to the brewing ui- dustry of 616,000,000 francs. The oil industry, which in the devastated re- gion produced 90,000 tons before the war, to- day represents a machinery, material, building, and exploitation loss of 172,000,000 francs. The tanning and leather industry, which was active in the region, represents a loss of 152,- 000,000 francs. The flom-- and other grain-mills represent a loss of 312,000,000 francs. The paper-mills and printing-plants repre- sent a loss of 700,000,000 francs. The other secondary industries, such as car- pentry, cabinet-shops, hardware plants, etc., mean a loss of many hundred milhon francs. To replace these minor industries wiU cost at least 4,000,000,000 francs. In general it may be said that the mines and manufacturing industries of northern France mean a loss at present-day prices, including raw and manufactured materials, machinery, buildings, and exploitation losses, of over 62,- 000,000,000 francs. 50 OUT OF THE RUINS The railroads have suffered a great deal in the devastated regions, as the Germans took away everything that they could use and made a point of destroying the rest, particularly the bridges and tunnels. Furthermore, 48,500 cars and about 2,000 locomotives fell into the hands of the enemy at the beginning of the war. Three thousand, five hundred miles of track have been destroyed; 2,060 miles of these belonged to the Nord Railway Company, and 1,440 miles belonged to the Est Railway; also, 225 miles of narrow-gage and tramway tracks were destroyed. Besides, 1,510 bridges and viaducts have been destroyed; also 12 tun- nels, 590 railway buildings, 150 water-tanks, 2,000 miles of telephone and telegraph lines and 20,000 tons of metal appliances. To put the road-beds and tracks back into shape for use, including the cost of materials and apphances, will mean the expenditiu"e of 2,426,000,000 francs for the railways, and 416,- 000,000 francs for the narrow-gage roads and tramways. The extra cost of up-keep until the roads are back on a normal basis amounts to 730,000,000 francs and 52,000,000 francs respectively; the exploitation losses amount to DEVASTATION 51 1,766,000,000 francs and 284,000,000 francs respectively; the bill to the army for its requisi- tion for the railways amounts to 1,314,000,000 francs. This makes a total loss for the rail- ways of 6,266,000,000 francs, ^and for the nar- row-gage and tramway lines of 852,000,000 francs; or 7,118,000,000 francs in all. Six hundred and seventy miles of canals and canahzed rivers have been damaged, including 450 bridges destroyed, of which 300 were iron bridges, 115 locks, and over 200 buildings, to say nothing of a number of syphons, gates, canal-boats, etc. It will cost 216,000,000 francs to repair the damage. There is a loss of 60,000,000 francs on delayed constructions, a 9,000,000 francs' exploitation loss, and a bill of 110,000,000 francs to the army for its requi- sitions; or a total of 485,000,000 francs, for canals and waterways. The seaports have suffered damage which it will cost 78,000,000 million francs to repair, and their exploitation loss amounts to 4,000,000 francs. Sixty-five thousand six hundred miles of roads and highways have been damaged, and 2,050 bridges, viaducts, and tunnels will have 62 OUT OF THE RUINS to be replaced. To put these roads back into shape will cost 323,000,000 francs, and the de- layed work of up-keep will cost another 665,- 000,000 francs. Meanwhile the extra cost of up-keep due to mihtary wear and tear repre- sents 240,000,000 francs. This means a total of 1,218,000,000 francs for the roads and high- ways. Almost all of the equipment of the postal, telegraph, and telephone systems in the in- vaded regions is gone. It will cost 295,000,- 000 francs to replace it. Thus there is a total loss on public works in general of 9,198,000,000 francs. In general the damage to buildings and other permanent structures, including mines and forests, amounts to 35,446,000,000 francs. Of this 19,000,000,000 francs can be considered for pubhc and private buildings ; 1,900,000,000 francs for agricultural buildings; 3,234,000,- 000 francs for cultivated soil; 1,400,000,000 francs for the forests; 1,434,000,000 for the coal-mines; 1,425,000,000 for the iron-mines; and 1,000,000,000 for other industries; 3,156,- 000,000 for the railways; 1,218,000,000 for other pubhc works. Household furnishings French Official Photo. GERMAN DEFENSES trencn Uj/ictal fnoto. TREES WANTONLY CUT DOWN BY THE BOCHES AT BOUZA AZETTE NIEUPORT To which only ten of its inhabitants had returned by- April, 1919. ■FJl Mi ^X^- ^^^^1^^^ ^^^^^M- y^3^Plr i^^Hjm : ~'\ - i: ■ .'''"%gk J^^^^^^^bH^^S French Official Photo. A DESTROYED DEPARTMENT STORE AT NANCY DEVASTATION 53 represent 10,000,000,000; agricultural imple- ments 3,186,000,000; farm animals 2,090,000,- 000; coal-mining machinery 1,404,000,000; iron-mining and iron-working machinery 4,- 836,000,000 francs; and that of other indus- tries over 6,000,000,000 francs. The losses in materials amount to over 16,000,000,000 francs for textiles and 5,839,000,000 francs for agri- cultural products. The total loss in materials amounts to 28,761,000,000 francs. The ex- ploitation losses amount to 23,242,000,000 francs. Thus the total bill which France pre- sents for her war damages is 119,801,000,000 francs. There is a phase of the appalhng damage that no amount of money will ever make good, and that is the sentimental and artistic value of the historical monuments of France. Under the French Ministry of Fine Arts almost all of the buildings or works of art in France that had any historical or esthetic value, have been classed as monuments historiques by the State, and the State has seen to it that they have been kept in a good state of preservation. Two hundred and forty of these historical monu- ments have been seriously damaged by the war; 54 OUT OF THE RUINS 27 of them have been completely destroyed; 50 have been damaged in the department of the Aisne alone, among them the cathedral at Sois- sons and the H6tel-de-Ville at St. Quentin; 6 of these have been entirely destroyed, in partic- ular the marvelous donjon of Coucy-le- Chateau, probably the best example of medie- val civil architecture in France. In the Marne 49 historical monuments have suffered injury and 58 other buildings noted for their artistic charm have been damaged; 12 of these buildings have been entirely destroyed, among them the medieval wooden houses in Rheims. The greatest and the most irrepar- able damage is of course that done the cathe- dral of Rheims, and with it the older church of St. Remy. The charming Louis-Thirteenth town hall at Rheims is completely destroyed. It has been estimated that it would cost over 400,000,000 francs to restore the buUdings in these two departments. In the Meurthe-et-Moselle 23 are damaged, but none totally destroyed. Most of the dam- age is in and around Nancy, although the fa- mous Place Stanislas and Place Carriere are almost intact. It is estimated that it would DEVASTATION 55 cost over 25,000,000 francs to repair the dam- age. In the Meuse there are 20 buildings dam- aged, but none entirely destroyed. The chief damage is in Verdun, St. Mihiel, and Cler- mont-en-Argonne. In the Nord the damage is not so serious, the chief injury being that done to the cathedral at Cambrai. In the Pas-ve-Calais 57 buildings have been damaged, 10 of which are monuments his- toriques. The famous cathedral at Arras has been badly injured and the still more famous town hall is almost entirely destroyed. It is reckoned that it will cost about 80,000,000 francs to restore the buildings. In the Somme about 20 monuments his- toriques have been harmed slightly, including the cathedral and two churches at Amiens ; and five buildings have been entirely destroyed, in- cluding the famous chateau at Ham. In the Oise 18 buildings have been injured and four completely destroyed; among the for- mer is the famous cathedral of Noyon, and among the latter are the town hall at Noyon and the charming church at Tracy-le-Val. 56 OUT OF THE RUINS In the Ardennes 13 buildings have been damaged and 3 destroyed. In the Vosges 4 have been damaged, includ- ing the cathedral at St. Die and the town hall at Rambervillers. In Paris, Notre-Dame was slightly injured by an aeroplane bomb; and St. Gervais, as every one knows, was hit on Good Friday by a shell from the long-range gun. The total repair bill for historical monu- ments may amoimt eventually to 1,300,000,000 francs. In addition it is estimated that there has been over 1,000,000,000 francs of theft and damage in museums and other public collec- tions. There is another kind of damage that can- not be estimated in terms of money, and that is physical injury. Entirely apart from the 1,- 400,000 French soldiers who were killed and the more than a million who were maimed, there has been a great loss among the civilian population in the invaded regions, especially those who suffered four and a half years of pri- vations during the German occupation. In Lille, for example, among the 110,000 people who stayed there during that time the general DEVASTATION 57 death-rate, which varied from 19 to 21 per thousand inhabitants, increased in 1918 to 41.55. This remarkable increase was due chiefly to an enormous spread of tuberculosis and organic diseases of the heart, dysentery, and other troubles caused or aggravated by improper nourishment. Alsace-Lorraine covers 5,604 square miles; that is, it is about the same size as the state of Connecticut. This is 2^/2 per cent, of the total area of France. It had 1,874,000 people be- fore the war. During the war the French held about 450 square miles. In Alsace-Lorraine there are over 1,000,000 acres of forests ; there were 5,691 textile plants employing over 80,- 000 people ; there were nearly 2,000,000 cotton- spindles. It produced annually 3,539,000 tons of coal; 20,083,000 tons of iron ore; 102,644 tons of potash, the total deposit of the latter being estimated at 2,000,000,000 tons. It made 2,908,000 tons of pig-iron, 1,445,000 tons of steel, and many other articles in lesser quan- tities. As there was no very hard fighting in Alsace or Lorraine, most of the mischief done there was caused by air-bombing or committed de- 58 OUT OF THE RUINS liberately. The charming old town of Thann is about half destroyed, as are a number of the villages to the north of it. But while the fig- ures are not at hand, the total damage is com- paratively small and to France the economic gain of the acquisition of the territory is very great. Destruction in Belgium is similar and about the same proportionally as that in France. But while Belgium had over 7,500,000 inhabi- tants before the war, her area is only 11,323 square miles, or a little over 5 per cent, of the area of France. It is estimated that the devas- tated area in Belgiimi covers only about 600 square miles, which is less than 10 per cent, of the devastated area of France. Before the war Belgium had nearly 1,500,000 acres of for- ests; it produced annually 3,253,000 tons of potatoes, 1,703,000 tons of sugar-beets, and great quantities of oats, rye, and wheat; 22,- 972,000 tons of coal were mined each year by 146,000 miners; 2,301,000 tons of pig-iron were made; 1,492,000 cotton-spindles were in use. There are about 85,000 damaged buildings in Belgium, of which over half are completely DEVASTATION 59 destroyed. Almost all of these are in the very- western part of the country, on each side of d line extending through Nieuport, Dixmude, Ypres, and Menin. But in Louvain, which is at the opposite end of Belgium from the devas- tated area, there are over 1,500 destroyed build- ings, including the famous library. The total war-damage bill of Belgium, ac- cording to the report made in April, 1919, by the Central Industrial Committee, is 35,- 000,000,000 francs. The injury to government property, rail- roads, postal service, telegraph, and telephone systems, public buildings, etc., amounts to 5,535,000,000 francs. The Government's war expenses and the Debt Service amount to 10,- 118,000,000 francs. The destruction of trans- portation other than that of the Government amounts to 797,000,000 francs. The taxes levied by the Qermans on the provinces amounted to 2,700,000,000 francs. The taxes levied on the communes amounted to 1,860,- 000,000 francs. The damage to industry by destruction and requisition, and the loss of ex- ploitation during the occupation, amount to 8,028,000,000 francs. 60 OUT OF THE RUINS Of this latter sum the German damage and requisitions amount to 5,750,000,000 francs, of which 658,000,000 are for the mines, 335,000,- 000 for the quarries, 496,000,000 for the cop- per, brass, and zinc industry, 1,107,000,000 for the iron and steel industry; 1,627,000,000 for the construction of machines, bridges, locomo- tives, and cars; 154,000,000 for the glass indus- try; 229,000,000 for the chemical industry; 2,- 000,000,000 for the textile industry; 174,000,- 000 for food manufacture; 144,000,000 for the lumber industry; 101,000,000 for building con- struction; 218,000,000 for the leather industry; 286,000,000 for tramways, water, gas, and elec- tricity; 70,000,000 for the paper industry, etc. The damage to agriculture is estimated at 1,602,000,000 francs. The damage to propri- etors, including the destruction of their build- ings and the stealing of their furniture and supplies, is estimated at 3,150,000,000 francs. This makes the actual damage to buildings, machinery, furniture, and supplies, amount to 16,886,000,000 francs. From the historical and artistic side, the loss in Belgium is not great, except for the destruc- tion of the library at Louvain, and of the M , li f m ^m THE CATHEDRAL AT YPRES A. R. C. Photo. THE OLD TOWN HALL AT RHEIMS THE CLOTH HALL AT YPRES The Cathedral in the background DEVASTATION 61 town hall and the cathedral at Ypres. These losses are among the greatest of the war. The human loss is much more serious. As was brought out in a report to the Belgian Government on March 26, 1919, 6,000 civihans were assassinated by the Germans, leaving over 7,000 orphans. Over 125,000 working-men were deported into Germany, where they un- derwent the worst kind of mistreatment. In Italy the official report made in April, 1919, places the total losses caused by the war at between 110,000,000,000 and 135,000,000,- 000 lira. Of this amoimt the damage done by bombardment, bombing, and fire amounts to between 10,000,000,000 and 15,000,000,000 lira. The debts contracted abroad and the financial depreciation at home amount to be- tween 45,000,000,000 and 50,000,000,000 hra. The retarding of the natural increase of public wealth amounts to between 35,000,000000 and 40,000,000,000 hra. The depreciation of pri- vate capital amounts to between 15,000,000,- 000 and 20,000,000,000 lira. The decrease of wealth in the annexed provinces amounts to between 5,000,000,000 and 10,000,000,000 hra. In Serbia the losses are estimated at about 62 OUT OF THE RUINS 15,000,000,000 franes. The Germans stole three crops, each worth 1,000,000 francs. They stole or killed over 130,000 horses, over 6,000,000 sheep and goats, 2,000,000 pigs, 1,- 300,000 head of cattle, and 8,000,000 fowls. They stole or destroyed over 750,000,000 francs' worth of manufactured articles. The damage to buildings and pubhc works is small, amounting to not much over 30,000,000 francs ; but the damage to furniture, tools, and uten- sils amounts to over 400,000,000 francs. The requisition and the taxes levied by the enemy came to more than 800,000,000 francs. There are over 100,000 maimed soldiers in Serbia, and over 150,000 children who have lost both father and mother. The official Rumanian statement made in April, 1919, places the material loss of Ru- mania at 10,250,000,000 francs, without counting that suffered by the departments and communes; and at 16,000,000,000 francs the injury to private individuals. Of this amount the damage to industrial buildings amounts to 650,000,000 francs. The damage to other buildings amoimts to 450,000,000 francs. While Rimiania was in the war and since the DEVASTATION 63 armistice, over 265,000 people in the country have died from epidemic diseases. Forty-six thousand soldiers died in captivity. In Poland it is officially stated that the civ- ilian war losses amount to 73,000,000,000 francs, which is fully one fourth of the total for all allied countries. The industries are to a very large extent wrecked and something like one twelfth of all of the buildings in Poland are destroyed. Germany has systematically tried to ruin her enemies. Almost no destruction has taken place within her own borders ; but she frankly boasts that she has tried to put France and Belgium in a position where they could not compete with her in the conmierce and industry of the world. The stupendous figures that we have just been presenting show how necessary it is, if we would prevent Germany from mak- ing good her boast, to help France and Bel- gium with their greatly weakened man power and resources get back on their feet again. Once they have had a hand up they can carry on themselves ; but unless they have that help, Germany will have won what many consider her first object in bringing on the war. CHAPTER III THE RETUKN When the Germans were pushed back, at the Battle of the Marne, the refugees poured back in their train. The Germans had advanced and retreated so quickly that except along the battle line of the Marne there was very httle destruction. Thus it was easy for the people to return and return they did, not only the refugees from the released land but also a great many who had been pushed out of the region beyond, which the Germans continued to hold for over two and a half years. The result was that the whole liberated region just west and south of the front was congested with refugees, in addition to the fact that every available space was taken by the French, British, or other armies for the billeting of men and horses. This liberated region was all considered part of the war zone and circulation was difficult. The main roads were always crowded with 64 THE RETURN 65 troops moving in or out and with immense stores of ammunition and provisions going up to the front. The soldiers were destructive, as armies always are, but on the other hand the army bought farm produce and other things as fast as these could be supplied. The army requisitioned most of the horses and cattle, but they would lend a helping hand with the plow- ing and in gathering the crops. German aeroplanes would come over now and then. At first they did not do very much except reconnoiter; but later on, on clear nights, they dropped bombs even in the most unexpected places. Wherever they could the Germans carried away farming-implements and machines, tools, machinery, utensils, furniture, and stocks of goods, but in general during this first retreat they were forced back so rapidly that they did not have time to do nearly as much damage as they did in their later retreats. Despite the difiiculty of transporting fertil- izer, seed, and tools, farming prospered in the early liberated regions, especially where sol-' diers could be had to help out with the work, to take the place of the men who had been mo- 66 OUT OF THE RUINS bilized. This rich agricultural land— ^the seven to eight thousand square miles that were liberated in the first retreat — continued at nearly its former productive value. In the towns people had a harder time of it. The shops had plenty of customers, but they had great difficulty in getting their supplies, for all of the railways were at the service of the army, and civilians could get only the small amount of space the army might let them have. Nearer the firing-line, within range of the German guns, conditions were much more dif- ficult. In general the French Army tried to keep a space some four or five miles deep be- hind the hnes to which no dviUans were allowed to return lest they be in the way of army opera- tions. As a matter of fact, however, the refu- gees would go back to their homes and to their daily life, even almost up to the firing-line it- self. A story is told of a French officer in charge of one of the sectors at Rheims, who was much worried about the French peasant farm- ers that persisted in working where they were in full view of the enemy, who every now and then would shell them. He expostulated witii the THE RETURN 67 peasants and tried to persuade them to stop, but they stubbornly insisted that they always had worked there and saw no reason why they should not continue. Finally he found that the only way he could protect them was to send out his military police and arrest them. They were typical of the French peasant farmer, who can't see why a passing thing like fighting should stop the work that he has been doing for a thousand years. All through history people have been fighting over this same land, and all through history the French peasant has kept doggedly at his work. If a shell fell in his field the farmer would go to work and fill up the hole. If a trench or barbed wire ran across his field he would plow around it. If a shell or a bomb broke his win- dows he would cover them with oiled paper or canvas, if he could get it ; if his roof or part of his wall was damaged he would try to get some tarred paper or tin with which to repair it. If the Germans had injured his farming-imple- ments he would do his best to repair them, or he would make shift with what he could find, although of course wherever he could he would go to the government repair shops to have his 68 OUT OF THE RUINS implements and machines mended up or to buy new ones. For such food as he could not sup- ply himself he would drive or walk to the near- est town. They did manage to exist, these refugees, but there was much suffering among them, both in the country districts and in the towns. It was to alleviate this distress that the French Government and various French and foreign societies started rehef work throughout the lib- erated regions, although it was not until the spring of 1917 that the work was done on any large scale. With the Battle of the Somme in the spring of 1917 the Germans were driven back as much as twenty-five miles in some places over a frontage of about one hundred and fifty miles. This released about one thousand, five hundred and fifty square miles of land, all the way from Lens on the north to Rheims on the south. There are over six hundred communes in this area and there was hardly one among them that was left intact. We did find, however, a few of the larger toAvns, like Noyon, Guiscard, Ham, and others, that had suffered compara- tively little, except along the railways. This THE RETURN 69 was because the Germans before retreating concentrated the French civilian population in these centers so that they could destroy the rest of the area systematically. This meant that almost all of the farming villages were demolished, and all along the former front, which the Germans had held for two and a half years, the destruction was complete. This was the first real desolation on the vast scale that we know so well to-day, where one can travel for miles and see nothing whole — gaping walls with perhaps a formidable Ger- man concrete gun-turret built right across what used to be a home; shell-holes so close together that the British officer was quite justified when he complained that the boches had not even left him the width of a single-file path for his mule train; unbelievable acres of rusting barbed- wire entanglements; ghostly gnawed-off for- ests standing ashamed ; every cross-road a vast crater, and everywhere the wreckage of war, as though a battle had been fought here only yesterday. Nevertheless, as soon as the Germans were driven out of the region the French peasants came trooping back from where they had been 70 OUT OF THE RUINS waiting all of this time, just west of the front, or from the interior of France. The French Army did not want them there because they were in the way and because they must be fed. The French Ministry of the Interior ordered the prefets throughout France to let only those return who could look out for themselves and who could be economically independent; but, despite the destruction and the menace of the Germans, anywhere from 10 to 25 per cent, of the original population retttmed into this re- gion. It was a strange experience, which I often had here in the summer of 1917, to go through village after, village that at first sight appeared to be completely deserted — ^where trenches ran through what was left of homes and where the farm-yards were a network of barbed wire — and see an old peasant woman emerge from a cellar, or an old man come out of a flimsy lean-to, and to find here and there chickens, rabbits, goats, and now and then a cow or a horse. It was a miserable existence at best; these people were real pioneers. One would see them picking in their ruins, and would wonder what they could sal- vage. ^ THE RETURN 71 The one bright spot for them was the army dump. No village fair nor city department store ever held out such tempting possibilities. To be sure, they were not supposed to take anything deposited here, but where one starts housekeeping with nothing at all, a rusty little camp stove or a broken-down iron bed or a sheet of corrugated iron is a Godsend, and somehow everything that human ingenuity could use melted away from the dumps, to re- appear as the pride of the home of some Robin- son Crusoe. It was in the little village of Pimprez, be- tween Compiegne and Noyon, that I was in a ruined stone house when the owner and her daughter returned to see it for the first time since the Germans were pushed back. For two and a half years these two had had to live in a dark, damp cellar under the house, sleep- ing on straw, and forced to take care of a group of German ofiicers who lived over their heads. They exultingly told how once a French shell had hit the house and killed most of the German occupants. They went with dry eyes all over the ruins of their home and of their charming garden (for the Germans had 72 OUT OF THE RUINS maliciously cut down every tree and bush in it, even uprooted the flowers) ; they did not really break down until they looked in the place where they had hidden their ancestral hnen only to find that the Germans had rifled it. Most of those that stayed through the Ger- man occupation preserve a bitter hatred of the boches and everything pertaining to them. The majority of the peasants feel about them as did an old woman in one of the little vil- lages back of St. Mihiel. An American sol- dier told me that when the American Army took the St. Mihiel sahent, in the summer of 1918, he arrived in a little village just after the Germans had left. The place seemed quite deserted, but as he and his companions pushed open the door of a httle house they found an old woman huddled up over a small fire. In his picturesque French he told her that the boches had gone and that the Americans had come to free her. She paid no attention and did not seem to imderstand. He illustrated what he had said as graphically as he could; and finally, without saying a word or even looking at her visitors, she got up, walked THE RETURN 73 across the room, opened the door of a cupboard, and swept all the china off one shelf after an- other, upon the tiled floor. The Americans naturally thought she was crazy, but they looked at the china bits and found on each arti- cle an imperial German double eagle. Her loathing for the German officers, for whom she had kept a popote for four years, could hardly have been more emphatically expressed. These pioneers who returned to the desert needed much help. The French Army, which extended a little to the north of the river Sorame, organized an important service for supplying the urgent needs of the returning civilians. Meanwhile the Ministry of the In- terior, working through the prefets, the sous- prefets, and the mayors, did what it could to help the people get started again. As far as possible they supplied food, clothing, tools, utensils, furniture, bedding, and materials for repairs, and even help in the plowing of the fields. They also secured some farm animals for the peasants. The Government put up nearly three thousand portable wooden houses, besides repairing several thousand more. North of the Somme, in the British Army 74 OUT OF THE RUINS 25one, very few of the inhabitants retxirned, partly because the land was so churned up by shell fire and the buildings so wrecked that to live there was almost out of the question, and partly because the British forces needed all of the available space for their military prepara- tions and provisioning. The British Army plowed about twenty-five thousand acres of land in the district, on which they raised crops chiefly for their own use. The French Gov- ernment did not encourage the refugees to return to this region. Meanwhile, to the south of the Somme vari- ous private relief societies came in, each taking a number of towns to itself in which it had ex- clusive charge of helping the returning refu- gees. Most of the clothing and furniture that they have been distributing comes from the Gr-overnment. These societies, several of which were British or American, worked under the Ministry of the Interior and later under that of Liberated Regions, supplementing the re- lief work which the French Government was doing. Their services were of the greatest value, and there is no doubt that there would have been vastly more suffering than there THE RETURI^ 75 was if it had not been for the devotidn of the French, British, and Americans who lived in these regions until the next German offensive, sharing the rough quarters of the refugees themselves. Three of these societies did a great deal of repairing, which was deeply ap- preciated by the refugees. During the winter of 1917-18 it was very cold and wet, and many of the refugees greW discouraged and went back into the interior of France. Those who persevered were just get- ting well started in their spring plowing when the great German offensive of the end of March, 1918, drove them out again. This time the French Government tried to evacuate everybody. Nearly twelve hundred square miles of land were again overrim by the Ger- mans on a frontage of about eighty miles and to a maximum depth of about thirty-seven miles. Many of the people moved into the dis- tricts just to the south, around Soissons and Chateau-Thierry, only to be driven out of that region again by the onrush of the enemy in the end of May, 1918. This time the invaders ad- vanced a maximum of about twenty-five miles and took about eleven hundred square miles of 76 OUT OF THE RUINS territory. Again every road was crowded with the farmers driving their live-stock before them, pushiDg baby-carriages, wheelbarrows, anything in which they could take away their more precious belongings. Some made their way almost across France before they found a resting-place. Nearly seventy-five thousand poured through Paris by train in the last days of May and the first days of June, 1918. All during the summer of 1918 they waited impatiently for their chance to return, and as fast as the Germans were driven back in August and the early autumn the refugees flocked in after them. The restrictions of the Government were severe at first because it was not prepared to take care of very many at a time, but as its services of transportation and provisioning improved the door was opened more and more, until in the spring of 1919 all restrictions were removed and anybody that wanted to go back could. Thousands of famihes went back on forty- eight-hour passes; a few stayed over in the ruins of their homes, but most decided to give it up for the time being and returned to their temporary abiding-place in the interior until THE RETURN 77 such time as the Government would be able to take care of them in their wrecked towns. In the early spring of 1919 many went back to plow and to start cleaning up their places, and as the weather became warmer people ar- rived in large numbers with the expectation of staying through the summer at least, and with the hope that they would be well enough in- stalled by autimin to carry on through the fol- lowing winter. Up to the first of July, 1919, Rheims, which was almost demohshed, had got back nearly 35,000 of the 115,000 inhabitants it had before the war. To Lens, entirely de- stroyed, 2,500 of its population of 32,000 had returned; to Chauny, also destroyed, 500 of its 13,000; to Ham, half -destroyed, had come 1,000 of its 3,000 people. There are many of the smaller demohshed villages to which virtu- ally nobody has returned even yet, but it is reckoned that among the three-thousand-odd damaged villages about 35 per cent, of the for- mer population has come back so far. This is in addition to the workmen and the soldiers quartered in the towns. French, British, and American relief socie- ties have been very active since the armistice. 78 OUT OF THE RUINS particularly since the first of the year, when refugees began to come back in numbers, A number of local committees have been formed to take care of regions that could not be so well looked after by the general relief societies. The Ministry of Liberated Regions has tried to divide up the field geographically among these different societies and committees, so that each will have without any overlapping a defi- nite district for itself, for which it will be solely responsible. These relief societies are still giv- ing, or rather selling, a considerable amount of clothing, furniture, utensils, etc. (chiefly fur- nished by the Ministry of Liberated Regions) , but more and more they are trying to help local commerce get on its feet, with the expectation that they wiU be able to withdraw most of their rehef work soon, allowing normal economic conditions to take their course. Lately these relief organizations have been actively helping the Government in its great program of cre- ating reconstruction cooperative societies and agricultural syndicates ; in establishing public- health services, dispensaries, and hospitals; and in creating centers of commimity life and recreation. THE RETURN 79 The Ministry of Liberated Regions has set up several thousand portable houses and many hundred large barracks. It is making emer- gency repairs on himdreds of other houses and in this work some of the relief societies are help- ing actively. The French Government has several himdred thousand men at work clean- ing up the fields and plowing them. Arrange- ments are being made for clearing away the ruins of the villages. The return is well under way. By the spring of 1920 life should have begun to be reestablished on every hand. CHAPTER IV PUBLIC BELIEF From the very beginning of the war, in August, 1914, the prefets of the ten depart- ments that were wholly or partly overrrm by the Germans were instructed by the Govern- ment in Paris to give every help they could to the refugees. Each prefet distributed relief, working through the sous-prefets, the mayors, and through local committees wherever they could be formed. Car-loads and truck-loads of food and clothing were sent down from Paris and elsewhere. On December 26, 1914, the French parlia- ment opened a credit with the Ministry of the Interior of 800,000,000 francs to meet the most urgent needs of the civilians in the war zone. Upon the creation of the Ministry of Liberated Regions, in November, 1917, the credit was turned over to the head of this depairtment, and on August 5, 1918, he reported to the parlia- 80 PUBLIC RELIEF 81 merit that 140,000,000 francs of this sum had al- ready been expended — 15,000,000 francs in the Marne; 10,000,000 francs in the Somme; from 5,000,000 to 8,000,000 francs each in the Oise, the Meurthe-et-Moselle, the Aisne, and the Meuse; and 2,500,000 francs each in the Nord, the Vosges, and the Seine-et-Marne. On May 18, 1919, the Ministry of Liberated Regions reported to the parliament that about 125,000,- 000 francs out of this credit had been advanced to the inhabitants of the liberated regions up to April 1, 1919, in the form of advances against their eventual war indemnity; that is to say, 20,000,000 francs directly against their eventual damages, 10,000,000 francs for urgent repairs, 15,000,000 francs for furniture, 5,000,- 000 francs to small shopkeepers, 18,000,000 francs to manufacturers, and 69,000,000 francs to farmers. This means only money given, and does not include any supplies. Meanwhile, from early in the war there ex- isted an interparliamentary committee which consisted of all of the Senators and Deputies from the invaded departments. This commit- tee considered the problems which affected their constituents. There was also an inter- 82 OUT OF THE RtJINS ministerial committee which consisted of repre- sentatives from all of the different ministries that were interested in the problems of the war zone. First the Ministry of the Interior, and later the Ministry of Liberated Regions worked in close contact and harmony with these two committees. In a decree of July 9, 1917, the Minister of the Interior arranged for the payment of 1 fr. 25 a day to each head of a refugee family or adult, and fr. 75 per day for each child un- der sixteen years of age. These are the same amounts that wives and children of mobilized soldiers were getting; however, in the case of refugees it was limited to three months, with the privilege of renewal if needed, provided the mayor, the prefet, and the committee in charge agreed. The decree arranged for the distribution of food to especially needy fam- ilies; it also tried to find work for the refu- gees. In a circular issued by the Minister of Lib- erated Regions in January, 1919, it was stated that refugees were to continue to receive this daily stipend, which had since been increased to 1 fr. 75 for adults and 1 fr. 4 for children under PUBLIC RELIEF 83 sixteen, until a general authorization was given allowing them to return to their native towns, with three months of grace after that date. Furthermore, every refugee was to be given twenty francs to help him get started imme- diately upon his arrival in his native town. Early in 1918 there was put in charge of re- lief work, in each of the hberated departments, a secretary-general who was directly responsi- ble to the Ministry of Liberated Regions for all rehef and reconstruction work in his depart- ment. Relief outposts were set up wherever needed in the department. These relief sta- tions sold, at a small price, clothes, linen, shoes, utensils, tools, etc. They were given priority in the transportation of their supphes. Each post took care of a number of communes and in each commune the station would rely on the mayor, the school-teacher, the cure, and others, to keep it informed about the needy people in their communities. The prefet and the secretary-general worked in close cooperation with any private relief so- cieties that were in the neighborhood, and al- ways made a point of rounding out the work of these societies. 84 OUT OF THE RUINS In October, 1916, I had the privilege of in- spectiQg the rehef work in the Department of the Meurthe-et-Moselle, with the prefet, Mon- sieur Mirman, who has since left, to administer the recovered province of Lorraine, His work was a striking example of how wholesale re- lief work can be made human, for despite the fact that he was taking care of thousands, al- most hundreds of thousands of refugees, he seemed to have a personal contact with them all and the children all knew him and flocked to him as their godfather. I asked him how he handled the relief prob- lem and where his money came from, and he said he went ahead and did everything that he felt necessary for his people, and then at the end of each month he sent in an account to the Government at Paris; usually there was no question, but if there was he would go up to Paris and fight it through, because he insisted on being allowed to use his own judgment as to what was needed and when it was needed. He showed us many buildings around Nancy that had recently been destroyed by nineteen-inch shells coming from about eight- een miles away. He showed us especially a French Official Photo. A TYPICAL GOVERNMENT PORTABLE TOWN HALL AND SCHOOL A. R C. Photo. A TYPICAL GOVERNMENT PORTABLE HUT A. R. C. Photo. THE INTERIOR OF A PORTABLE HUT FOR REFUGEES A. R. C. Photo. THE INTERIOR OP A TYPICAL WOODEN HUT PUBLIC RELIEF 85 school building which a few weeks before had been hit by a shell while school was in session. Fortunately, when the first shot was fired that morning the teacher took all of the children down into the basement of the school, and when the second shot demolished the building over their heads not one of the children was harmed. During constant bombardments Nancy was full of refugees from Pont-a-Mousson and the villages to the north where the fighting was go- ing on. Despite the danger most of the refu- gees preferred to stay here rather than to be sent off to the interior of France; they had a feeling that any day they might be able to get back to their homes. The result was that there was a most serious relief problem in Nancy. We visited the big military barracks on the edge of the town, where Pref et Mirman showed us twenty-five hundred refugees, men, women, and children. All had beds, mattresses, and plenty of blankets; each family had a place which they had partitioned off for themselves ; there was a big common kitchen and dining- room where nourishing meals were prepared and served ; there were work-rooms for the men and women; there were schools in which the 86 OUT OF THE RUINS girls learned housekeeping, sewing, and cook- ing, and schools in which the boys learned car- pentry and various things connected with farm- ing; and there was — ^what Prefet Mirman was proudest of — a theater! He said that he had had much trouble in enforcing discipline at first: at least eight guards were necessary just to keep the children out of mischief ; but when he put in the theater, with cinema shows, ama- teur theatricals, concerts, and other attrac- tions he found that he could reduce his guards from eight to two. But the charming thing about my visit was to see the way every one greeted the prefet with a smile. All the chil- dren would run up to him and he had a cheery word for every one ; he inquired after each one's health and told each just what to do to take care of himself. There was one child who had been behaving very badly and sternly but tact- fully the prefet told him just why he must do better, appealing to his good nature. With every one he was very kind, very gentle, very patient; but at the same time he made all of them realize that they must play the game too. In the autumn of 1916 he was taking care of all of "liiese people, and paying all overhead ex- PUBLIC RELIEF. 87 penses, for 1 fr. .05 per person a day; to-day the same thing would cost about double. In the summer of 1919 we find this work con- tinuing, the Government encouraging private relief societies to work wherever they can and dividing up the field among them. More and more the Government is creating local com- mittees that will be responsible for their respec- tive districts. It is encouraging normal busi- ness ; it is helping the local shopkeepers, build- ing-trade and professional people to begin life anew in their OAvn towns ; but wherever there is real suffering that nobody else is trying to re- heve, the Government steps in and takes up the task. In recognition of the immediate need for the resumption of a normal economic existence a special service was organized on December 18, 1918, in the Ministry of Liberated Regions, called the Service des Travaux de Premiere Urgence. It is the duty of this service: (1) To plow and to sow all land that is immediately available. (2) To remove unexploded munitions from the soil; to fill in the trenches and the shell- 88 OUT OF THE RUINS holes ; and in general to put the soil hack into condition for cultivation. (3) To make temporary repairs to any houses that can easily be made habitable, and to put up all sorts of temporary shelters for the retimiing refugees. (4) To erect barracks for the housing of labor at work in the devastated regions. (5) To put back the narrow-gage railways throughout the devastated regions. In addition to the central organization in Paris, there is a branch organization in each department, which has its own personnel, trans- portation, and stock of material. On June 15, 1919, the work was divided into twenty sectors, with a total of 827 officers in charge and 5,197 office workers and foremen. The labor in- cluded 82,640 French civihans, 8,122 French soldiers, 17,199 Russians and colonials, and 179,906 German and other prisoners : a total of nearly 300,000 people doing emergency work in the devastated regions. The pay-roll, trans- portation, and supphes were costing the Gov- ernment about 200,000,000 francs a month. This army, however, was getting splendid re- PUBLIC RELIEF 89 suits. By the fifteenth of June nearly 5,000,- 000 acres of land had been put back into con- dition for cultivation; over 80,000,000 square yards of barbed-wire entanglement had been cleared up; about 33,000,000 cubic yards of trenches and shell-holes had been filled; nearly 75,000 houses had received enough temporary repairs to make them habitable; and in addi- tion nearly 5,000 portable houses had been erected. One of the most serious problems of all is water-supply. During the war the engineer- ing corps of the various armies put in a sani- tary water-supply in each camp center. This water-supply was usually left in good condi- tion when the army withdrew; in fact, a num- ber of new ones were established, but these by no means sufficed. Ever since the army left, the sanitary service of the Ministry of Lib- erated Regions has been studying this situation and through the Service des Travaux de Pre- miere Urgence has cleaned out and rendered safe a number of wells. Meanwhile, on May 21, 1919, the Director of the Bureau of Rural Engineering issued a statement about water- supply showing under just what conditions it 90 OUT OF THE RUINS was or was not safe to drink the water found in wells, ponds, or brooks in the devastated re- gions. The statement is based on a general order issued by the French Army Headquar- ters Sanitary Service on October 27, 1914. As the question of sewage-disposal also has become most virgent in the devastated regions, especially in cities and larger towns, the sani- tary service of the Ministry of Liberated Re- gions and the Service des Travaux de Pre- miere Urgence have had to devote much atten- tion to disinfecting the ruins and to cleaning out and patching up the vaults and the sewers. It is a particularly difficult problem at Rheims, where there are now over thirty thousand peo- ple living in the ruins. One of the worst problems of all is that of the mosquitos. Every shell-hole, every trench, is a breeding-place for these insects, even the deadly malaria mosquito. The condition is an extremely hard one to remedy on account of the extent of the problem, but the trenches and shell-holes are rapidly being filled in and in other breeding-places kerosene is being put to destroy the pest. A great deal of medical work is necessary PUBLIC RELIEF 91 to take care of the iirgent cases — either those persons who have fallen sick suddenly, or those who have been wounded by exploding muni- tions. And so the Ministry of Liberated Re- gions has been trying to organize a dispensary and a hospital in each of the larger centers, and is encouraging in every way possible the pro- vision of traveling dispensaries to serve the devastated towns. Physicians demobilized from the army are encouraged to go at once to the devastated regions to help out there. Meanwhile the various relief societies have sent many doctors and nurses there. When a refugee gets back into the devas- tated regions and finds that he needs help of some sort, he goes to the mayor of his com- mune ; or if the mayor is not yet back, he goes to the sous-prefet or even to the prefet, and makes his requests. The prifet, in collabora- tion with the secretary-general of the depart- ment, takes the case up with the proper ser- vice of the Ministry of Liberated Regions, and any matter of immediate relief that is recom- mended by the prefet is taken care of as soon as possible by the various services of the Min- istry of Liberated Regions, at no cost to the 92 OUT OF THE RUINS applicant. Very often, where the Grovemment cannot at once give the help needed, a local so- ciety, or one of the large general relief so- cieties, comes to the rescue. There always seems to be a good understanding between the Government and the private relief groups. In July, 1919, I found that at the great re- lief warehouses of the Ministry of Liberated Regions at Rheims over four thousand new refugees were being fitted out every month. The enormous stock of furniture, bedding, stoves, cloths, food, implements, etc., was turned over every two weeks. The refugees bought at lowest wholesale cost whatever they needed, but they paid no cash, as the value was simply deducted from their eventual indenaf"- nity. Every applicant was carefully investi- gated and followed up. It remains only to be seen how the State takes care of the demobilized soldiers in the devastated regions. In the first place, the government allowances for the soldier's fam- ily continue for six months after demobiliza- tion, but in decreasing amoimts during the period; on the other hand, if the demobilized man cannot get work he is entitled, as head of A HOME-MADE HOME AT ESMERY HALLON, SOMME THE ONLY TWO HOMES IN NIEUPORT IN APRIL, 1919 'Arne-r-ics^n Xe-o Crois P«.pa.rtni«.nt of G«v.-,e. X?. at net a ' blU; tower* IH-portmcnts oj Tkifc it CrJo.. -/lord Ami.n» ' l5i.>r>mc - Oi.« X...OO A..n, ChBlon. ^ _-_ _M»rnt M«i«r.« ^ ^ 1 ^ Ai^tnnt. Verdun MtutM. >\B,rlhe «t Moiellt -Vo.v" 3ru5e. Court rni AKcrK>. PUBLIC RELIEF &8 the household, to an out-of-work allowance of 2 fr. 25 a day, with 1 fr. a day for his wife, 1 fr. for each child over sixteen years of age out of work, and fr. 75 for his father or his mother out of work. If a demobilized man owned any property he was excused from the payment of interest and taxes during the war and for six months after. If he rents property, he gets special rates or a complete exemption from rent. All leases are automatically extended, where de- sired, for a period equal to the length of the war. If a demobilized man is a landlord and his tenants cannot pay, he can himself secure an indemnity from the State. Moreover, the State conducts an employ- ment bureau for demobilized men, and gives in cash to each demobilized man 250 francs ; in addition to this he receives from 15 to 20 francs for each month of service ; and 52 francs more is allowed for clothes. Maimed soldiers are well taken care of by a special bureau of the Government. The Government has organized re-education schools all over France that are re-educating thirty thousand maimed soldiers at a time. In u OUT OF THE Hums addition there are private schools, most of thelil in Paris, that are taking care of about three thousand more. These schools fit a man to earn an independent economic livelihood ac- cording to what he was best fitted for before the war. Attendance on them is optional, but there is a waiting-list in most of them. Maimed soldiers returning to the devastated regions can learn free of charge in these schools a useful occupation in agriculture or trade, which will make him a helpful economic factor in the reconstitution of the region. CHAPTER V PRIVATE RELIEF From the first days of the war there has been a great outpouring of sympathy for the vic- tims, and every one has been more than wilhng to turn to and help to the best of his ability. Individuals and societies representing all of the allies and most of the neutrals have given freely of their money and personal help. From the very beginning the three societies of the French Red Cross and various other French groups have been working with the refugees who were driven back by the German advance. But it was not until the spring of 1917, when the Germans were driven back in the Somme, the Aisne, and the Oise, uncov- ering the hundreds of towns and villages which they had wilfully destroyed, that the real pio- neer relief work began. Previous to that time, perhaps the biggest work done by any one so- ciety was the achievement of the English So- 93 96 OUT OF THE RUINS ciety of Friends in the Meuse and the Marne, especially east of Vitry-le-rran9ois in the vil- lages destroyed in the first Battle of the Mame. From the spring of 1917 to the spring of 1918, almost all of the interest was concen- trated in the newly released region where the refugees were struggling to get back. By the time of the great German advance in March, 1918, there were already, according to the of- ficial list of the Ministry of Liberated Regions, fourteen societies doing general rehef work in the devastated regions, and twelve societies and at least eleven more private groups doing re- lief work in particular localities. L'Aisne Devastee was giving relief any- where in the department of the Aisne. The American Relief Clearing House, which was taken over by the American Red Cross in June, 1917, was giving supplies to societies that were working locally. The Canadian Red Cross was distributing supplies generally. L'OEuvre des Colonies de Vacances de la Chaussee du Maine was distributing supplies where they could be best used. La Provence pour le Nord, especially the PRIVATE RELIEF 97 Marseilles Committee, sent plants to be used in gardens in the North. La Societe des Agriculteurs de France dis- tributed seeds, f ertiUzer, and agricultural tools and machines. The Students' Atelier Reunions, under the direction of the Rev. and Mrs. Shurtleff, did general relief work. Le Comite de I'Aisne, with M. Gabriel Hanotaux as president, distributed relief in general in the Aisne. Le Comite de Compiegne was particularly interested in the department of the Oise. Le Comite des Communes Liberees de rOise, with Senateur Noel, the Mayor of Noyon, as president, was particularly active in the region around Noyon. Le Comite du Secours National helped aU of the various other societies. Small groups organized by Madame de Cosse-Brissac and Monsieur Holman-Black, and by Madame Thibaut, did general relief work. More particularly. The American Fund for French Wounded (Comite Civil), under the direction of MJiss Morgan and Mrs. Dike, took 98 OUT OF THE RUlIsrS care of the region around Blerancourt in the Aisne. The Smith College Relief Unit took care of fifteen villages between Ham and Nesle in the Somme, with their headquarters at Gre- court. The American Red Cross repaired thirty- five or forty buildings in five villages in the Somme, northeast of Nesle, and did general relief work throughout the whole region. The French Wounded Emergency Fimd, in collaboration with the British Red Cross, took care of nineteen villages in the Somme, be- tween Peronne and Ham. The British Society of Friends put up their barracks in five villages west of Ham, and repaired houses in several villages north of Roye. Le Comite Central Americain and L'aide Immediate, under the direction of Mrs. Dur- yea, took care of all of the villages in the can- ton of I?oye. L'Assistance aux Depots d'Ecloppes, un- der the direction of Madame Odier and Made- moiselle Javal, looked after a number of vil- lages in the western sector of the Somme. PRIVATE RELIEF 99 Le Village Reconstitue, under the direc- tion of Monsieur d'Eichtal and Monsieur Letrosne, organized dispensaries at Noyon, Bailly, Lassigny, and Ribecourt, in the Oise. La Renaissance des Foyers Devastes par la Guerre, with Madame St. Rene-Taillandier as president, looked after fifteen villages in the Oise, between Noyon and Roye. Le Secretariat Fran9ais des Villages Liberes, with Madame Moreau as president, was especially interested in Chiry-Ourscamps in the Oise. L'Union des Femmes de France, with Madame Perouse as president, and with Mon- sieur Verne in charge, took care of Nesle and nine villages near it. Madame de Ste. Aldegonde took care of Villequier-Aumont in the Aisne; Madame Brincard, of Bethancourt in the Aisne; Mad- ame de Chabannes-la-Pallice, of Maucourt and Quesmy in the Oise; Madame d'Escayrac, of Passel in the Oise; Madame d'Evry, of Nampoel in the Oise; Madame Jacques Faure, of Baboeuf, took care of Grandru, Babceuf, and Appilly in the Oise, and of Neuflieux, Caumont, and Commenchon in the Aisne; 100 OUT OF THE RUINS Madame Geoff ray, of Manicamp in the Aisne; Madame Getting, of Larbroye in the Oise; Madame de Langlade, of Cuts and Caisnes in the Oise ; Madame Lef evre, of Mondescourt in the Oise; and Monsieur and Madame Lu- chaire, of Marest-Dampcourt in the Aisne. In fact, in ahnost every one of the devastated villages where twenty or more people had re- turned, there was a relief society to help them with food, clothing, furniture, bedding, uten- sils, tools, agricultural implements, farm ani- mals — ^in short, with everything the refugees needed to help them get back on their feet. Almost all of these societies stayed right on the spot during the winter of 1917-18, despite the fact that it was one of the coldest and most disagreeable winters that there had been for some time. Almost all of them were there in March, 1918, to help the refugees evacuate when the Germans were advancing so rapidly. One and all they did a splendid and devoted work. From the end of March, 1918, until August, or rather September, 1918, no refugee could get back into the devastated regions, except of course for the small devastated area in the PRIVATE RELIEF 101 Marne, the Meuse, and the Meurthe-et-Mo- selle, where the first Battle of the Marne had taken place. In September refugees began to come back, but very slowly at first, and it really was not until some little time after the armistice that the people began to arrive in any appreciable numbers. Some of the relief so- cieties disappeared, but others followed the people, although during the winter of 1918-19 very little relief work was done. The Ameri- can Red Cross started shortly after the armis- tice helping the returning prisoners as they came back through the liberated regions, and around the first of January they started their wholesale relief work from Belgium down to Alsace. The American Committee for dev- astated France started first at Chateau- Thierry, later moved up to Vic-sur-Aisne, and then back to its old quarters at Blerancourt. The Smith College Rehef Unit started in again the first of January, at its old headquarters at Grecourt. The British Friends' Mission started in in September, 1918, repairing houses and putting up their portable huts from Cha- teau-Thierry to Rheims ; in the spring of 1919 they went back to their old region, near Ham 102 OUT OF THE RUINS and Roye. The Belgian Relief Commission put up in the North three hundred and sixty large barracks with labor from the United States Naval Reserve Corps. Meanwhile, to- gether with the British and French armies and the chambers of commerce, it fed nearly two million people in the liberated regions until the French Government could build up its own machinery for handling the problem. Most of the relief societies that we are de- scribing here are American. That is only be- cause I happen to know more intimately what they are doing than I do about the French societies. We must not go away with the idea that America is doing it all: far from it. At best we are doing only a small part of what is being accomplished. All honor must be given to such French societies as the Secours Na- tional, le Secours d'Urgence, I'Aisne Devastee, le Pas de Calais Devaste, the three societies of the French Red Cross, and many others for the wonderful work they are doing. The best way to get an idea of how private relief work was carried on, is to take up the work of a few special organizations. The first foreign society in the field on the French PRIVATE RELIEF 103 side of the line was the British Society of Friends who came to France early in the autumn of 1914 and started right in doing urgent relief work similar to that which they had done in France during the War of 1870. They installed themselves first in the Marne and the Meuse, along the line of the Battle of the Marne, especially in the charming little old towns of Sermaize-les-Bains, Pargny, Heiltz- le-Maurupt, Revigny, and many other villages between Bar-le-Duc and Vitry-le-Fran9ois. As the former inhabitants returned to these vil- lages after the Battle of the Marne, the Friends, both men and women, helped them in every way that they could. Up to the time of the German offensive in March, 1917, they had helped nearly 12,000 families, or about 35,000 people in 282 different villages. They had put up 500 temporary houses and 27 barns. They had distributed some 12,000 packages of clothes and as many more pack- ages of bedding; also nearly 5,000 articles of furniture. In addition they had distributed about 125,000 francs' worth of seeds, fertihzer, and farming-machines and tools, to say noth- ing of 1,200 chiqkeRS and rabbits. 104 OUT OF THE RUINS In Sermaize and Pargny they constructed whole villages of brick, enough for thirty or forty famihes in each case, with a charming little garden behind each house. They went into the business of building barracks on a con- siderable scale, establishing a saw-mill and shops at Ornans and Dole in the Jura; and wherever they found a refugee family living in a cellar for lack of better lodgings, they would set up one of their portable houses with two or three rooms and a shed. The French Govern- ment supplied them with the material, but they furnished aU of the labor themselves. They started schools for the children and a cottage hospital at Sermaize-les-Bains, and sent out their doctors and district nurses wher- ever there were no French doctors available. They estabUshed a children's convalescent home at the Chateau de Bettancourt, in the Marne. It was of the greatest help to invalid children. But probably the thing that was most appreciated was their maternity hospital at Chalons-sur-Marne, where up to the signing of the armistice over a thousand children were born. After the German offensive in 1918 the PRIVATE RELIEF 105 Friends worked with the refugees in a number of places throughout the interior of France, and put up their barracks wherever the French Government felt they were most needed. When the Germans were pushed back in the summer of 1918, they followed right back into the district between Chateau-Thierry and Rheims, and did splendid relief work similar to that which they had done in the Marne and the Meuse a few years before. They put up several hundred of their barracks and repaired a number of houses in the vicinity of Chateau- Thierry. Meanwhile, in the summer of 1917, the American Friends' Mission, which was con- nected with the American Red Cross, joined forces with the British Society of Friends and the two combined soon had nearly six himdred active workers. The help of the American Red Cross, with supphes and transportation, made it possible for them considerably to ex- tend their field of usefulness. On October 3, 1918, the Sous-Prefet of Ver- dun formally asked the Anglo-American Friends' Mission if they would take over all of the relief work for the returning refugees in 106 OUT OF THE RUINS the whole district to the west of Verdun. This is a charming agricultural country, now almost completely destroyed, as for the better part of four years it was the battle-ground first of the French and later of the Americans. The district runs nearly over to Sainte-Mene- hould, and includes part of the forest of the Aigonne and the famous towns of Clermont- en-Argonne and Varennes-en-Argonne, run- ning almost up to Montfaucon. There are some sixty villages in the district. pThey took it over as soon as they could and called in their forces from other parts of the devastated regions, so that before long they had nearly five hundred men and women at work in these villages. When I visited them there in April, 1919, they were fully installed in a big French farm group, the owner of which had run away to Switzerland at the out- break of the war. There were a hundred and thirty Friends Uving in barracks which they had inherited from a camouflage section of the French Army, and all the barns were fuU of supplies which they were giving or selling to the refugees. There were a number of big C9,inions in the yard which had been loaned PRIVATE RELIEF 107 them by the American Army, and even about twenty side-cars which the American Army had let them have. They had tractors and all kinds of agricultural machinery, everything necessary to help get the fields back under cul- tivation. About one hundred men were busy erecting portable houses. I went to the little town of Neuvilly, where they were putting up about fifty-two of their huts at the particular request of the mayor. I asked to meet Mayor Jacque- man and found him living in a little two-room portable house; the kitchen table was spread with papers and books on which he was con- ducting unaided the whole ofiicial business of the town. He told me that he decided who should have the portable houses and he was very careful to see that no one who had any amount of money of his own should get one. About half of the houses were on private prop- erty and the rest on public land. Wherever possible a rent of 112 francs a year was charged for the house. When people could not afford to pay, their rent was remitted. In June, 1919, the Friends were putting up barr»Qk§ 9,t the rate gf twenty-five a week, and 108 OUT OF THE RUINS in all they had erected up to that time in the Mame, the Meuse, the Aisne, and the Sorame, nearly nine hundred houses, enough to house over three thousand persons. During the same time they had repaired about eight hun- dred houses, enough to take care of another three thousand persons ; all of this in addition to the work they had done on stables and barns. As the American Army moved out of the district, the Friends bought up five dumps, which gave them a quantity of material for distribution. They are now gradually turning their attention from relief work to more per- manent social-welfare work and about one hundred and fifty members will continue dur- ing the winter of 1919-20 helping the return- ing refugees through the trying period. The civilian division of the American Fund for French Wounded started work in the devastated region of the Aisne, with a center at Blerancom-t, very shortly after the Germans were pushed back in the spring of 1917. It did a great deal of most useful relief work in about twenty of the surrounding villages. It gave people food, clothing, furniture, house- hold utensils, farming-implements — in fact, PRIVATE RELIEF 109 everything needed to set up life again. Its doctors and nurses found an unlimited amount to do. In April, 1918, the civilian division was in- corporated as a separate body called The American Committee for Devastated France. However, it could not go back to the devas- tated regions at that time, as they were all occupied by the Germans, so it looked up the refugees from its own villages around Bleran- court, wherever they happened to be in the in- terior of France, and gave them such care as it could. As soon as the Germans were driven back around Chateau-Thierry in July and August, 1918, the conmiittee established itself in Cha- teau-Thierry and started relief work in the neighborhood. As the Germans were driven farther back the workers followed after them, first taking up their quarters in Vic-sur-Aisne, and finally moving back to Blerancourt. The committee then took over the relief work of about one hundred villages in the Aisne, with centers at Vic-sur-Aisne, Blerancourt, and Soissons. It has given about seventy-five thousand fruit-trees to the natives and about a 110 OUT OF THE RUINS million vegetable plants. It did a particularly active work in two hundred villages in the Aisne in helping the Hoover commission dis- tribute food and clothing. Its chief work to-day is helping the return- ing refugees to get back on a normal basis. It is giving French shopkeepers a start wherever they are ready to begin. It is selKng tools, animals, and seeds to any farmer ready to keep on once he can be given the initial start. It is helping building-workmen get under way by furnishing them with tools and materials and by providing a work-shop with machinery where they can turn out doors, windows, furni- ture, and hardware. Aside from its regular medical and nursing visiting service, it is col- laborating with the American Women's Hos- pitals. It has established an emergency hos- pital center at Blerancourt. In addition it is helping in the forming of reconstruction co- operative societies and agricultural syndicates. The Smith College Relief Unit, with sixteen members, arrived in France in August, 1917, to do rehabilitation work in the devastated re- gions. Until January, 191S, it worked in co- operation with the American Fund for French PRIVATE RELIEF 111 Wounded. In January, 1918, it became affil- iated with the American Red Cross. Since January of 1919 it has been working indepen- dently. In September, 1917, at the request of the French Ministry of the Interior, the unit took charge of fifteen villages in the Somme, with headquarters in the charming grounds of the chateau at Grecourt which was destroyed by the Germans. All during the winter of 1917- 18 it did most eflPective relief work for the refu- gees that had returned into the devastated vil- lages. Its workers lived with their people and knew them all intimately, and there is no doubt that their care and personal attention meant everything to the health and personal comfort of the villagers during that trying winter. The members of the unit lived themselves in tents or flimsy wooden barracks throughout all the storms and freezing weather, their only heat being furnished by little camp stoves in which they burned such green wood as they could find in the neighborhood. Their devo- tion endeared them greatly to the refugees. At the end of March, 1918, in the great Ger- man offensive, the Smith Unit women stayed 112 OUT OF THE RUINS until the last moment, helping the refugees to get away and serving hot chocolate and food to the worn-out British soldiers that kept pour- ing through their place, until finally at about four o'clock one morning a British officer rode up and told them that the German machine- gtms were only a few miles down the road. Their auto-trucks were ready and they left all of their barracks and stores behind, asking the British to bum them so that they could not fall into the hands of the Germans. Then they picked up all of the French refugees that were left and went to Montdidier, only to be chased out of that city, and so on to Amiens. Mean- while they were making constant trips back and forth, evacuating the refugees. At every stopping-place they set up a canteen to feed the hungry people as they poured through. From then until the first of January, 1919, they worked continuously with the American Red Cross, organizing canteens and doing hospital work for the American soldiers. But at Christmas-time in 1918 they returned to their former villages in the Somme and found that about three hundred people had already come back and were living in misery because PRIVATE RELIEF 113 now the villages were completely destroyed. I went back with them on New Year's Day in 1919, when they distributed four truck-loads of food, clothing, and utensils to the refugees who had returned for a second time. I shall never forget how glad the villagers were to see them, nor how grateful the people were for the help and the knowledge that the unit was coming back to live among them. Everything seemed hopeless in that region, where not a building was habitable and where most of the country looked as though a battle had just taken place. Except that almost all of the bodies had been buried, nothing seemed to have been picked up. In the unending cold and sleet of the winter the situation was most disheartening. The re- tm-n of the Smith Unit was the one thing that could have helped the morale of the peasants. Its members settled down again in Grecourt in January, just as soon as the French Army could put up some barracks for them. They divide their work into visiting, agricul- tural work, stores, children's, and medical de- partments. In the visiting department they have three trained social-service workers, each of whom is responsible for five or six villages ; 114 OUT OF THE RUINS they go from home to home, investigate every case where help is asked, report to the unit's doctor and nurse every case of sickness and then do follow-up work under the direction of the medical department. They know aU the people and everything about them and so can give the most intelligent kind of help. Of course a detailed card-catalogue is kept of all of the cases. As most of the villagers are farmers, the ag- ricultviral department is of the greatest use. They have brought in and sold about a him- dred cows and many hundred chickens, rabbits, and pigs ; also farm implements, seed-potatoes, and vegetable seeds. All of these they sold in the beginning at half -cost, but now they are selling at about cost so as not to compete with the local merchants who are getting reestab- lished. They even have a tractor which they are renting at a reasonable price to neighbor- ing farmers. They keep eight cows and sell the milk to sick people and little children at six sous a hter. They are providing fruit-trees to take the place of all of those cut down by the Germans. Their store, and especially their traveling PRIVATE RELIEF 115 stores, have been most popular. When their big truck, looking like a Yankee peddler's cart, drives into a village, the whole town — men, women, and children — come out of their cellars, their lean-tos, or their barracks, if they are lucky enough to have them, and crowd around it; it is just like a village fair. They take the greatest care in choosing the pat- tern of their dress material. Incidentally the store receipts for the month of March, 1919, were 10,731 fr. 90. But what they are partic- ularly trying to do is to help the shopkeepers in the various villages to get started in business again. The unit sells them supplies at cost and fixes the price at which they may re-sell. It hopes very shortly to turn all of its store business over to them. The unit has made a great feature of its work among the several hundred children that have already come back. Until very recently no schools had been started, despite the fact that many teachers had returned, because there was no place in which to hold classes. How- ever, by the first of July several schools had been opened. In the meantime the Smith Unit workers were teaching the children out- 116 OUT OF THE RUINS door games and recreation, and were trjring to bring back the native songs and dances. They are establishing a library of -children's books which they are lending through the school- teachers, first in one village and then in an- other. At the same time they have been buy- ing maps, charts, blackboards, and other school supplies, so that the schools could start as soon as a place was available. The Smith Unit's doctor and nurse have al- ways been most popular, especially as there has been no French doctor or nurse available near by. The unit has a dispensary at Grecourt which is busy at all hours, and the doctor and nxirse make a regular round of visits in the vil- lages. More than one child's life has been saved by their untiring care. Older people as well as children from time to time are wounded by exploding ammunition. Now the medical service is making a sanitary survey of all the villages; it is having the wells cleaned and is following up carefully the matters of sewage-disposal, manure piles, flies, etc. The character of the imit's work is necessar- ily changing all the time, as living conditions PRIVATE RELIEF 117 return to a more normal basis. Emergency relief work is no longer as necessary as it was. Local stores are being established everywhere. A large part of the area is now back under cultivation. The portable houses are begin- ning to arrive and everything that can be re- paired is being made habitable. The big need of the future, the greatest usefulness of a group like the Smith College Relief Unit, is to leave a permanent heritage in the land, to give the local leaders the benefit of their training and experience in health and social-welfare work. To that end the workeus are now tak- ing in as collaborators French nurses who will carry on their medical and sanitary work after the unit leaves ; and they are starting commun- ity social centers, about which will be grouped all that is necessary for the social well-being of the men, women, and children of the neighbor- hood. At the same time they are helping the peasants in their relations with the authorities in all matters that have to do with reconstruc- tion, including the founding of reconstruction cooperative societies and agricultural syndi- cates. Theirs is a splendid constructive pro- 118 OUT OF THE RUINS gram, one that could well be repeated through- out the devastated regions ; a program most ap- preciated by the French Government. All during the first years of the war the American Relief Clearing House supplied many French and American relief societies with money, food, clothing, and other things that had been sent from America. Most of this, to be sin-e, went for military relief pur- poses, but a certain amount went to help the refugees. When the American Red Cross arrived in France in June, 1917, it took over the Ameri- can Rehef Clearing House and all of its obli- gations, and then proceeded to broaden its field, helping any worthy relief society. Owing to the retreat of the Germans in the spring of 1917, and the number of French and Allied re- lief societies that had gone into the Sonmie, the Aisne, and the Oise, to take care of the return- ing refugees, the American Red Cross had a splendid opporttmity to use its money and sup- plies to excellent advantage by working through these groups. It undertook virtually no direct distribution to the refugees. However, it did try out an experiment in PRIVATE RELIEF 119 reconstruction in five villages of the Somme. From October, 1917, until they we're driven out by the Germans in March, 1918, from twelve to sixty French workmen repaired about forty houses and barns, all of which were destroyed again by the Germans before they were driven out in the summer of 1918. During the spring and summer of 1918 the American Red Cross work with French civil- ians was most active in the interior of France, where the society organized a relief service in each one of the seventy or more departments. Soon after the armistice the American Red Cross established several canteens and relief stations at Rheims, St. Quentin, Mezieres, and elsewhere, to take care of the French military prisoners and civilians released from Germany. By the end of the year it had effected a vast organization for wholesale relief, from Bel- gium all the way down to Alsace. Six dis- tricts were created in France, with headquar- ters at Lille, Amiens, Laon, Mezieres, Chalons- sur-Marne, and Verdun, and a seventh district in Belgium, with warehouses at Bruges, Adin- kerke, and Courtrai. At each of the French centers a huge warehouse was installed, each 120 OUT OF THE RUINS surrounded by smaller distributing centers. Each of these warehouses was stocked with clothing, furnishings, dry-goods, beds, bedding, and furniture, some tools and agricultural im- plements, about two hundred barracks in all, and a certain small amount of food. These goods were given by the American Red Cross to local committees or societies, which sold the supphes at a reasonable price to the refugees. When no local society existed, the local dis- tribution was undertaken by the mayor and his helpers. There were in June nearly 250 of these local committees and societies, besides about 35 local work-rooms. The Red Cross was reaching through these committees about 325,000 people in over 2,000 towns and vil- lages. It took a personnel of 222 people to carry on this wholesale operation and to trans- port the supplies.in 102 trucks and automobiles allotted to this purpose. During the month of May, 373,859 refugees returned, and during the same period the American Red Cross received at its local cen- ters over 221 car-loads of goods, and reshipped 307 car-loads and 124 truck-loads, weighing 3,500 tons. In May alone 1,400,000 articles French Official fhoio.' A HOUSE DESTROYED BY A NINETEEN-INCH GERMAN SHELL French Official Photo. A HOUSE REPAIRED BY THE FRIENDS REFUGEES PROM THE NORTH IN BARRACKS AT DREUX, NORMANDY PRIVATE RELIEF 121 were distributed, valued at 4,420,000 francs. While the American Red Cross gave its sup- plies to the local societies, it expected them to sell the articles at a price which would not be too far below the cmrent prices in the neigh- boring stores; and with the money coming in from the sales the local societies were encour- aged to buy medicines, farming-tools, and many other things that the American Red Cross could not supply from its available stores. Almost all of the American Red Cross supplies came from the liquidation of Red Cross affairs. As part of its general policy the American Red Cross is closing up its wholesale ware- houses during the summer of 1919, and turn- ing over all of its supplies to the French local committees and societies, which will carry on the work, with supphes which they will con- tinue to receive from the French Ministry of Liberated Regions and from other sources. Important as this immediate relief work has been, the great contribution in the hberated re- gions is the creation of these local committees and societies who are learning how to handle relief work efficiently and who now can be ex- 122 OUT OF THE RUINS pected to cany on the work after the Red Cross leaves. The departments have differed greatly, according to the initiative and the or- ganizing ability of the prefet or the secretary- general who was the responsible representative of the Ministry of Liberated Regions for the department. In the Pas-de-Calais, for ex- ample, nine strong societies existed before the Red Cross came in the field, and the devastated region had been divided up among them by the Government in proportion to what each could handle. In the neighboring department of the Nord, there were very few committees, so the American Red Cross working in harmony with the French Government has organized thirty- five or forty local committees. The organizations that have just been de- scribed in some detail were chosen at random as typical of the various activities in the devas- tated regions. There were many others — most of them French — 'that were doing most excel- lent work and they one and all have had a de- cided effect on the morale of the returning refugees. The great problem now is what these organ- izations are going to do in the future. It is PRIVATE RELIEF 123 obvious that as life gets back nearer and nearer to a normal basis, as stores are opened up, as fields are plowed, as roads are repaired, as shel- ter is provided, as the railroads begin to run normally, and in particular as the French Gov- ernment services are becoming better organ- ized, there is less and less need for outside re- lief. Thus the whole tendency now on the part of the relief societies is to try to do some- thing of permanent value for the future, and in particular at the request of the Ministry of Liberated Regions to try to estabKsh health and social-welfare centers and to train a French personnel to carry them on. CHAPTER VI THE STATE PAYS ALL WAR DAMAGES On December 26, 1914, the French Parha- ment enunciated the principle, unique in the world's history, that the State should pay in full all material war damages suffered by any one in France. It also demanded the payment of these damages by the enemy. The whole coimtry has held strongly to this principle ever since. Very soon after the beginning of the war the French Government began to draft a biU determining in detail just how the State should reimburse the individual for his material losses occasioned by any act of war. On May 7, 1915, the Chamber of Deputies Committee began the consideration of the Gov- ernment bill known as the Desplas BiU. A number of French societies took an active part in helping the committee frame this bill, espe- cially Le Comite National pour la Reparation Integrale des Dommages causes par le fait de 124 WAR DAMAGES 125 la Guerre ; La Federation Rationale des Asso- ciations Departementales des Sinistres; Le Musee Social; L'Union des Comites De- partementaux des Sinistres, and many other organizations, in particular the various tech- nical associations. The committee reported to the Chamber on July 13, 1916. On January 23, 1917, the Chamber of Dep- uties adopted a bill which was the result of these two years of work. In general it pro- vided that any one who had suffered material war damage should be reimbursed by the State for the full value of his damage. This was to be estimated not only on the basis of values as they were in 1914, but if he rebuilt within the same commune he should receive from the State a supplementary damage equal to the increased cost of materials and of labor at the time of re- building. This bill then went to the Senate committee, which considered it continuously during 1917. On December 22, 1917, this House adopted a bill similar to the Chamber of Deputies Bill but with a number of modifications. The chief dif- ference in the Senate project was in regard to the much discussed question of remploi, that is 126 OUT OF THE RUINS to say, rebuilding in the same community; for the Senate went unanimously on record to the effect that any one who had suffered war dam- age should be paid in full at present cost of re- placement, regardless of where he rebuilt or whether or not he rebuilt at all. The Senate argued that it was for the good of France as a whole, and only just, that every person receiv- ing war damages should have the right to de- cide, himself, where and how he would use his money. The Chamber of Deputies, on the other hand — ^which is elected locally, each dep- uty having a specific constituency of one hun- dred to one himdred and fifty communes — felt that unless there was in the law a special in- ducement to people to reinstall themselves in the devastated regions, the greater number might take the easier way and make their homes elsewhere in France, or even in foreign countries, whereupon the devastated regions, formerly the richest part of France, would be- come comparatively a desert. The Chamber of Deputies took the modifi- cations of the Senate under consideration and numerous meetings were held to try to deter- mine on compromises which would satisfy both WAR DAMAGES 127 Houses, with the result that on February 1, 1919, the Chamber adopted the Senate draft in its general lines but with minor modifica- tions. Subsequent deliberations took place in the Senate in March, in the Chamber in April, and later in April in the Senate. On April 17, 1919, the Senate adopted and the President of the Republic promulgated a war-damage law virtually identical with that voted by the Chamber of Deputies in Febru- ary. The law was in effect from this date. It is interesting to note that the Belgian war-dam- age bill, similar in so many ways, was adopted and promulgated on May 10, 1919, together with various additions on May 15 and on June 1, 1919. The French law contains seventy articles and about fourteen thousand words. Because it is said to be the first law of its kind in his- tory, and because of its immense effect on the future of the devastated regions and, indeed, of the whole of France, a study of its leading principles and provisions is well worth while. The law defines the following material dam- ages as coming within its scope: (1) Any requisitions made by allied or 128 OUT OF THE RUINS enemy troops ; any contributions, taxes, or fines imposed by the enemy; and any damage caused by the lodging of enemy or allied troops. (2) Everything material that has been stolen or lost, including crops, animals, trees, goods, furniture, stocks, and bonds; any de- terioration or partial destruction caused to any of the above, regardless of the author ; and any loss of movable property in France or abroad occurring during an evacuation or a return. (3) Any deterioration, or partial or total destruction to any building or any machines, tools, animals, or accessories 'having to do with any commercial, industrial, or agricultural ex- ploitation. (4) Damages shall be paid even where property was in a military zone and even when they were damages occasioned by war preparatory or preventive measures. (5) Any damage caused to fishing-boats. All demands for the payment of damages are grouped and appraised and the damages fixed by categories. Where the enemy has held part of the capi- tal of a society, the members of the society will WAR DAMAGES 129 be entitled to an indemnity equal to the benefit they should have derived normally from this capital if this had not been taken. The right to receive damages applies to strangers in France, according to conditions which will be determined by treaties between France and the various nations in question. The material damages to be paid by the State include not only the loss sustained, ac- cording to its appraised value just before war was declared, but also the supplementary cost of replacing buildings or goods to-day. The supplementary expenses are given to the appli- cant only in case he rebuilds or reestabhshes any industrial, commercial, or agricultural property (regardless of whether or not it is of the same use as previously) in the same com- mune it was in before, or within a radius of fifty kilometers and not outside the devastated region. However, where the State expropri- ates agricultural land the farmer may get the supplementary damages if he reestabhshes himself anywhere within the devastated re- gion. Depreciation and obsolescence are sub- tracted from the appraised value of the prop- erty; but where a man rebuilds in his former 130 OUT OF THE RUINS neighborhood he is entitled to a sum up to ten thousand francs from the State to oflFset these deductions, and if he needs more than this to offset them the State will loan him the money for twenty-five years at 3 per cent, interest. For agricultural buildings not over 20 per cent, shall be deducted in any case of remploi. All reconstruction must conform to the laws and rules of public sanitation and health, and to new rules which are being laid down by the Superior Council of Hygiene. Any supple- mentary cost to the commimity of such im- provement is assumed by the State. If the war-damage tribunal finds any reconstruction contrary to pubhc health or general economic interest, it can interdict it. Where a war-damaged property is not re- established in the same region, the supplemen- tary expense due to the increased cost of re- building and material to-day, is attributed by the State to a common fund to be used for the advantage of the devastated regions. Mean- while the property-owner receives a bond from the State representing the money due him and yielding 5 per cent, interest annually. These bonds are not negotiable for five years, but WAR DAMAGES 131 money can be borrowed on them as secm-ity; starting at the end of the sixth year, the bonds will be amortized in ten equal annual pay- ments. An applicant has two years after his damage has been fixed in which to decide whether he will reestabhsh his property in the same neigh- borhood or not. If he does, he is expected to furnish, with his demand for the supplemen- tary expenses, plans, specifications, and esti- mates of the work to be done or the objects to be bought. There are a number of special clauses which take care of the right of co-part- ners or other members of a society interested, the lessee, the holder of a mortgage or of a lien on the property, also the people affected by any public or private restrictions on the property. In the case of any pubUc building or any re- ligious building, the damage consists of the sum needed to erect a building of the same character, importance, and use as the destroyed building. The Minister of Fine Arts has ap- pointed a commission to follow up all such cases. The value of any movable property is based 132 OUT OF THE RUINS on its value June 30, 1914, or, if it was bought after that time, on its cost when bought. The supplementary damages represent the differ- ence between the value determined as described above and the cost of replacement at the time that the appraisal is made. Supplementary damages are given only for movable objects included in the following list: (1) Raw materials and supplies needed by an industrial plant to put it back in normal running order for an initial period of three months; this also includes articles being fabri- cated at the time of the destruction, and the articles needed in the exercise of a profession. (2) Animals, fodder, fertilizer, seeds, crops, and anything else necessary to keep an agricul- tural plant going until the next harvest. (3) Any tools, machinery, or other articles or installation needed in commerce or the exer- cise of a profession ; and any raw materials or goods needed for the running of any business or industry during the first three months. (4) Any personal property in connection with the home, such as furniture, furnishings, linen, and even any ornaments, provided that WAR DAMAGES 133 no one of the latter shall be reimbursed at more than three thousand francs. Bonds and mortgages of the French Grov- ernment will be replaced by others of the same sort. For any other bonds, mortgages, or sim- ilar papers, coming from any French or for- eign source, the State will pay damages on the basis of the quoted value at the time of the appraisal of the loss. A public notary is entitled to receive dam- ages equal to the difference between the value of his bureau just before the war and at the time of appraisal. If the bureau is suppressed, special damages are awarded depending on the case. If the applicant for indemnity is receiving an indemnity for the same things from any other source, such as insurance, the sums re- ceived outside shall be deducted from the amount awarded by the State, except that the State will reimburse premiums paid. The money spent by the State for temporary shel- ter for returning refugees or for animals and furniture is not deducted from the total of the indemnity. For temporary construction an 134 OUT OF THE RUINS applicant can receive an advance of not over one third of the total of his indemnity, and if he is going to reconstruct he can receive 5 per cent, annually on the balance of the indemnity until he does. The damages enumerated above are to be ap- praised and determined by commissions to be created by the Government as soon as possible, at least one to each canton. A special commis- sion in the Department of Public Works in Paris will take care of all matters that have to do with boats or water transportation. Each commission is composed of five members; the president is to be a judge of a civil court, or in any case a member of the bar; one member of the commission is to be named by the Min- ister of Finance and the Minister of Liberated Regions ; one is to be an architect, a contractor, or an engineer; one is to be a person who is specially competent to appraise furniture and movable objects; one is to be a farmer, a man- ufacturer, a merchant, or a workman, accord- ing to the nature of the damages to be ap- praised. In addition there is to be a competent secretary. A quorum consists of the president and three members. When the damage to be WAR DAMAGES 135 appraised has to do with mines, quarries, for- ests, or ponds, there are to be men especially competent in those subjects on the commission. The same is true in the case of the appraisal of any matter that has to do with boats or naviga- tion. In each department the prefet has to create a special committee to establish unit prices for everything that enters into construction, both for 1914 and for the present day. These units serve as a basis for the appraisals to be made by the cantonal commissions. Interested persons or societies are requested to submit their applications for indemnities due them just as soon as possible, together with all facts and supporting papers that the cantonal commissions may need. There are a number of special provisions which determine the right to indemnity of wives, minors, incompetents, or absent persons. The cantonal commission has the right to convoke any interested parties and if there is disagreement among them the commission will try to settle .it ; if not settled by the commis- sion, the case goes to the proper tribunal. In the chief town of each arrondissement 136 OUT OF THE RUINS where there are cantonal commissions, there is a war-damage tribunal. This tribunal con- sists of a president named by the Minister of Justice, two members and two alternates also named by the Minister of Justice, and two members and two alternates chosen by lot every two months from a list of twenty names se- lected by the department council. It should decide all cases submitted to it' by the cantonal commissions. The tribunal can subpcena any persons or papers needed. The decisions of the tribunal are final, ex- cept that they can be reviewed by the Conseil d'Etat — ^that is, the Supreme Court of France in administrative matters — for incompetence, exceeding of powers, or violation of the law. As soon as a final decision has been reached on the amount of damage to be awarded, the applicant is entitled to a bond from the State for the total amount, and if he decides to re- establish his propeiiy he receives a supplemen- tary bond for the amount of the present ex- cess cost of reestabhshment. Depreciation and obsolescence will have been deducted from these bonds. The 5 per cent, annual interest cm the bonds usually dates from the day when WAR DAMAGES 137 the damage occurred and is payable in cash. Where the applicant is ready to reestablish his property in the same region, he has the right within two months after he has been awarded his damage to receive in cash an ad- vance of 25 per cent, on the 1914! appraised value, and in any case at least 3,000 francs and not more than 100,000 francs, except where the war-damage tribunal allows more. As reconstruction proceeds, or as articles are bought, the applicant has only to present the bills and they will be paid within two months, up to the total appraised value of the property plus the supplementary costs allowed. When the applicant has used up all of his damage, he can borrow from the State at 3 per cent, a sum equal to the amount deducted for depre- ciation and obsolescence after he has used up the 10,000 francs allowed in certain cases. If the applicant decides to reestablish himself in the devastated regions but not within fifty ki- lometers of the place where his loss was sus- tained, he can still receive the above advances from the State up to the total appraised value of the property in 1914. With the consent of the applicant the State, 138 OUT OF THE RUINS instead of paying the indemnity in cash, can give in exchange an equivalent building in the same or a neighboring canton, or equivalent movable objects. The State can also furnish materials or do reconstruction work on its own account. With the consent of the applicant the State can free itself from its obligations by buying any property at the appraised value. If the cost of bringing the ground back un- der cultivation is more than the value of the land itself, the State is bound to expropriate the property at the appraised value. If the applicant owes any money to the State, it is to be deducted from his awarded in- demnity. In general, interest on the indemnity bonds is calculated from November 11, 1918, at 5 per cent., payable quarterly and in cash. Many special things, however, date from the day the damage was incurred. If a man has sold a property between the time the damage occurred and the promulga- tion of this law, he can demand his property back at the price he received for it if he wishes to reconstruct. WAR DAMAGES 139 Any applicant who wishes to reestablish his property in the devastated regions has the right of priority in the transportation of any- thing that he may need for this reestablish- ment. The State assumes aU costs of making prop- erty surveys, of clearing out the ruins, of clear- ing away all unexploded war material, and the State assumes the proprietorship of all such material. It is responsible for all accidents due to the explosion of war material. The State assumes the cost of the making of all town plans. It will expropriate and pay full appraised value for all land or buildings taken in connection with any public improve- ment, as determined by the new town plans. It assumes the cost of all improvements re- quired in public sanitation. The law is applicable to French colonies and protectorates. The only striking difference between the Belgian law and the French law is that the for- mer provides that if an applicant wishes to re- ceive from the State supplementary damages to cover the increased cost of construction and replacement to-day, he must rebuild within the 140 OUT OF THE RUINS same commune ; however, the war-damage tri- bunal has the authority in special cases to al- low him to rebuild elsewhere within the king- dom. Ever since the beginning of the war the State has been making advances to the return- ing refugees on the principle that as the State was committed to the poUcy of repayment in full, there was every reason why a certain small percentage of the eventual indemnity should be advanced as needed. On July 5, 1917, a law was passed stating just how and under what conditions damage claims should be filed and verified. According to government decrees, a man who has suffered a war damage would apply through the mayor of his commune to the prefet of the department. The prefet would send three experts to make a provision ap- praisal of the damage, on the basis of values as they were in 1914. Then the prefet could make an advance in cash to the applicant, as the latter's bills for reconstruction became due, up to 50 per cent, of the appraised value. On October 12, 1918, this was raised to 75 per cent, of the appraised value, and where the WAR DAMAGES 141 work of reconstruction was done in common — that is to say, where the individuals were grouped together into a reconstruction coop- erative society — they could receive up to 00 per cent, of the appraised value. Meanwhile, any temporary repairs, the erec- tion of portable houses, and half the cost of providing them, was assumed gratuitously by the State. Furniture and furnishings were advanced to the applicant at first on the basis of a maxi- mum of 500 francs to a head of a family and 200 francs apiece for other members of the family. On November 2, 1918, this was in- creased to 1,000 francs for the head of the fam- ily, and on February 25, 1919, arrangements were made whereby the State would advance the money in cash so that the apphcant could go out and buy the furniture himself. On July 12, 1918, advances of 1,000 francs per hectare — ^that is to say, about 400 francs per acre — of cultivable land, were allowed ev- erjrwhere in the devastated regions. Only 400 francs of this amount could be paid in cash ; the other 600 could be used only for the payment of bills for agricultural implements, cattle, fertil- 142 OUT OF THE RUINS izer, seeds, etc. This was later increased to 2,000, 3,000, and even 4,000 francs per hectare in special cases. On October 13, 1917, and on October 21, 1918, special arrangements were made by the Minister of the Interior and the Minister of Liberated Regions respectively for making ad- vances not to exceed 3,000 francs to farmers, shopkeepers, artisans, and small manufactur- ers, to cover their initial expenses in starting their enterprise again. On February 21, 1919, the same help was extended to the larger man- ufacturers and to contractors. The advances were based on their necessary expenses for the first three months in getting under way, and should not exceed 12,000 francs per employee. On February 22, 1919, a similar allowance was made for advances to people engaged in a pro- fession, to help them get started, and in this case the total advance was limited to 10,000 francs. On April 25, 1919, advances were allowed to individuals or reconstruction cooperative so- cieties of from 2 to 4 per cent, of the appraised value of the damage for paying the cost of the WAR DAMAGES 143 initial work of lawyers, experts, architects, en- gineers, etc. Since the passage of the dommages de guerre law, on April 17, 1919, the Minister of Liberated Regions has decreed that apph- cants shall continue to receive the advances which are described above, until such time as the machinery has been prepared for the effec- tive operation of the new law. The cantonal commissions for determining the amount of damages to be paid were in operation by the end of July. There will be in all about eight hundred of these commissions. Meanwhile the government officers in each department are receiving already hundreds of thousands of requests for the payment of war damages and up to July 1, 1919, it was esti- mated that the Government had already paid out in advances against the eventual indemnity, something like five hundred milUon francs. CHAPTER VII EECENT LAWS ATFECTING BJECONSTEUCTION The war has had an inspiring effect on social legislation in France. There are many peo- ple who feel that the new point of view created by the great conflict has advanced social wel- fare in that country by at least twenty-five years. This is strikingly true as to legislation long needed with regard to public health, housing, and town-planning, for along each of these lines quite remarkable laws have been voted in France between the signing of the armistice and the signing of peace. On March 14, 1919, the French Government enacted a law making the improvement of the plans of cities and towns compulsory through- out the repubhe. It is the first broad compul- sory national town-planning law in the world, and France has set a standard which other na- tions are hastening to copy. It was on the strength of the example set by France that the British House of Commons voted on May 28, 144 RECENT LAWS 145 1919, a law making town-planning compulsory throughout England from 1923. The French town-planning law requires that every town throughout France of over ten thousand inhabitants shall make within three years a plan for its improvement, embellish- ment, and extension. This plan shall deter- mine the direction, width, and character of the thoroughfares to be created or improved; the location, extent, and lay-out of pubKc open spaces, including parks, playgrounds, and res- ervations; also the location of public buildings and monuments. The plans are to include, also, recommendations for restrictions in re- gard to hygiene or esthetics, and also provision for water-supply and sewage-disposal. Plans must also be made for all subdivisions, all resorts, and all rapidly growing communi- ties. In particular, any part of any town or vil- lage, regardless of its size, which has been wholly or partially destroyed by any act of war, by fire, earthquake, etc., must have a plan made within three months for the improvement of the street alignment and grades of the dis- trict in question, accompanied by a study for 146 OUT OF THE RUINS the general improvement, embellishment, and extension of the district; and until such plan has been made and approved, no construction, except temporary shelters, can be carried out. Furthermore, it is understood that if the towns themselves cannot pay the cost of mark- ing these plans, the State will do it. The mayor and the municipal councU can choose their own experts to make the plans, which, however, must be passed upon by the Bureau of Hygiene, and then sent to the gen- eral town-planning commissioners of the de- partment in which the town is located. The commissioners make their recommendations, or changes, or improvements in the plans, which then go back to the municipal council with the expectation that it will adopt them. Once a plan is. adopted, no structure can be erected save where the mayor issues to the owner per- mission to build. In addition there is a national town-planning commission which standardizes town-planning practice and issues rules to the municipalities to guide them in the application of the law. It also gives its advice and decision on any prob- lem presented to it from the departments. RECENT LAWS 147 By the first of August, 1919, there were several hvindred commimes in the devastated regions at work on their plans, and depart- mental town-planning commissions were busy trying to keep up with the flood of plans com- ing in for their approval. The next most important law affecting the future planning of towns in the devastated re- gions is the expropriation law which was en- acted on November 6, 1918. This law is an important modification of the famous French law of May 3, 1841, on the expropriation of private property for pubhc use. The three outstanding advantages of the new law are: (1) That, for the first time in the history of France, the State or the municipality can ex- propriate for a public use a whole zone, not only the land actually needed for a public im- provement, but such extra land as may seem desirable if the State would get as much ad- vantage as possible out of the improvement, either now or in the future. (2) That the State has a right to impose an excess-benefit tax on any surroimding property 148 OUT OF THE RUINS whose value is increased more than 15 per cent, by the improvement. (3) That the expropriation jury, instead of consisting only of proprietors, as heretofore, shall now consist of anybody who fulfils the conditions nececsary for serving on a criminal jury. Up to July, 1919, this law had not yet been applied, but the French are lookirig forward with great interest to its apphcation. The third law of interest in the devastated regions is the one which was voted on Novem- ber 27, 1918, and revised March 4, 1919, with a view to facilitating the reparceling of rural property and the settling of disputes over the location of party lines. The stranger often wonders at the long plowing-strips which he sees throughout France, and the curious way in which property is broken up into small ir- regular parcels. These peculiarities are due to the French inheritance laws, which provide that real property must be spht up among aU the heirs. The result is that parcels tend to grow smaller and smaller, except as they are imited again on the initiative of individuals. FRENCH ARCHITECTS AND CONTRACTORS IN PARIS INVESTI- GATING OFFICIAL EXPERIMENTAL CONSTRUCTION WITH MUD OFFICIAL EXPERIMENTAL FARM BUILDINGS MADE WITH MUD WALLS — PARIS OFFICIAL KXPERIMENT WITH ROUGH BARN CONSTRUCTION- PARIS A HOME OF BROKEN BRICKS AND MUD MORTAR, ESMERY HALLON, SOMME RECENT LAWS 149 I have heard of a case where one fanner had two hundred and sixty separate parcels of land, all irregular, some of them no bigger than a room. It is almost impossible to improve a town plan or to secure efSciency in farming where land is broken up so queerly. The new law tends to rectify this trouble by providing that properties in a given district, which have not been built over, can be pooled, new streets and new property lines laid out, and then unified parcels given out to each of the contributing proprietors, the area and quality of such parcels to be equivalent to the aggregate of those contributed to the pool. There would be no cash transaction in this proceeding, except where there were certain buildings or other constructions that could not be taken care of by a simple exchange. It is understood in the law that whenever a prop- erty-owner within the district that is being re- parceled does not object to the reparceling, he may be considered officially to be in favor of it. Up to July, 1919, this law had not been put into effect in the devastated regions, as the ministerial decree defining the methods of pro- cedure had not been promulgated. It is ex- 150 OUT OF THE RUINS pected, however, that the law will be in opera- tion very shortly. In many ways the most important law of all, as affecting the future of the devastated regions and indirectly the whole of France, is to be foxmd in Article 5 and Article 62 of the law enacted on April 17, 1919, providing for the State reimbursement of war damage. In these articles it is specified that everything constructed in the devastated regions shall con- form to the laws and rules of public sanitation, and that the State shall pay the extra cost of all improvements effected by the community. On June 2, 1919, a decree was published setting forth the apphcation of this law and ordering municipalities to make plans imme- diately for improving water-supply and sewage-disposal, and insisting that all building plans should be passed upon in regard to sani- tation before the owners were allowed to build. This goes back to the famous public-health law of February 15, 1902, which was a purely permissive law allowing municipalities to cre- ate a pubhc-health commission that should control sanitation within the community Un- fortimately, for obvious political reasons this RECENT LAWS 151 law has not been very widely applied. How- ever, in July, 1918, the Superior Council of Public Hygiene of France published two model sanitary ordinances, Model A for cities and towns, and Model B for villages and rural communities. These model ordinances were urged upon the various communities through- out the country for their local adoption, and now they are serving as the standard rules that must be conformed to in all reconstruction in the devastated regions. The model rural sanitary ordinance pro- hibits thatched roofs, even on bams. It con- tains a number of provisions for insulating floors and walls to minimize the damp interiors that one finds all through the country districts of France. It orders that kitchens shall be large and well lighted and well ventilated. Every precaution shall be taken against flies in the kitchen. Waste water shall be properly taken care of. Bedrooms shall be at least 8 feet 8 inches high in clear and there shall be at least 750 cubic feet of air in the room. There shall be at least 15 square feet of window-opening. No one will be allowed to sleep in cellars, attics. 152 OUT OF THE RUINS barns, or stables, which means putting an end to the custom prevailing throughout France of having farm-hands sleep in the stables. A great deal of attention is paid to water- supply, and it is required that water shall be brought directly from its source wherever pos- sible; that wells shall have tight walls and a high curb and be located as far as possible from water-closets and manure piles. All of the farm-buildings in which animals are housed shall be kept as dry as possible. Again, everything shall be done to keep out the flies. All manure shall be removed at least twice a week in winter and at least three times a week in summer, and the farmers are absolutely pro- hibited from letting it stay along the street, or against houses, or near the water-supply. The purin must be collected in tight cisterns. Unsanitary waste matter must not be thrown into any stream or pond and shall be deposited as far as possible from any house or street. Greatest care must be taken in the location and installation and up-keep of water-closets or privies. RECEIPT LAWS 158 Any case of infectious disease must be de- clared, and isolated wherever possible. Every- thing that has to do with the sick person must be disinfected. The model urban sanitary ordinance has some interesting additions to the one for rural communities. For example, it requires that every inhabited room shall contain at least 90 square feet of floor space, and the area of the window-openings in each room shall be not less than one sixth of the area of the floor. Sleeping in cellars is prohibited, and even where a cellar is inhabited only during the day, its floor must be not more than 4 feet belgw the level of the street. The first and second floor must be at least 9 feet 4 inches high. Buildings on the street line are limited to a height equal to the width of the street, plus from 13 to 30 feet ; but on all new streets buildings can be no higher than the street is wide. Private roads must be at least 30 feet wide; interior courts must be at least half as wide as they are high. Even light- shafts must have at least 150 square feet of area. 154 OUT OF THE RUINS Running water shall be easily accessible to every one. Wells may be used only under special conditions. Contrary to the usual practice in country dis- tricts, waste water must not be thrown into the rain-water down-spouts. Every lodging with two rooms or over not including the kitchen, must have its own separate, well-hghted water-closet. Water- closets must not communicate directly with bedrooms or kitchens. Wherever there are sewers in the street, every house on the street must connect with them. Cesspools are pro- hibited. In towns of over twenty thousand in- habitants no building shall be done except with a permit from the mayor. Every infraction of these rules is punished by a fine. The apphcation of these laws means every- thing for the future of the devastated regions, and indirectly for France as a whole. The republic is taking a long step forward. She is showing to the world that she means to rebuild the devastated regions in a way that will be worthy of her artistic traditions, worthy of the ■sacrifices of the war, worthy of France. CHAPTER VIII GOVEENMENT ORGANIZATION FOR RECONSTRUCTION As we have seen, the French Government has been actively interested in the liberated and the devastated regions from the very beginning of the war. In August, 1914, as the refugees were driven west and south by the advancing German Army, the Minister of the Interior in- structed the prSfets of the invaded depart- ments to use a free hand in taking care of the civihans, and all through the interior of France they were instructed to do everything neces- sary to shelter, feed, clothe, and even find work for the refugees. As the Germans were driven back after the Battle of the Marne, an area of some 7,000 or 8,000 square miles was hberated, in which there were serious problems of immediate relief, and gradually increasing problems of agricultural, industrial, and commercial reestablishment. In December, 1914, the French Govem- 155 156 OUT OF THE RUINS ment, which was then sitting at Bordeaux, voted a credit of 300,000,000 francs on which the prefets of the liberated regions were virtu- ally given carte blanche to draw for the reUef of their people, and to help them get back on their feet. For the jSrst two years of the war the expenditure of this money was in the hands of the Service of Control and Accounting of the Ministry of the Interior. On July 20, 1915, the Minister of the Interior issued a decree calling for the declaration and appraisal of damages throughout the devastated regions. Early in 1916 the Ministry of the Interior cre- ated a special service of reconstitution, with Monsieur Bluzet as director, to handle all mat- ters that had to do with the liberated regions. In May, 1916, the Government created an interministerial committee, composed of repre- sentatives of all of the French ministries that had to do with the liberated regions. The function of this committee was to coordinate the work of relief and reestablishment under- taken or projected by the various government bureaus. It appointed several technical com- missions to advise it on various problems that interested it. REBUILDING A STORE AT RHBIMS THE baker's house AT LA BASSEE ' French Official Photo. A HOUSE REPAIRED BY THE AMERICAN RED CROSS QUIMPER, BRITTANY Twenty-five hundred refugees were housed in these barracks. ORGANIZATION 157 Meanwhile, both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate appointed various committees to consider liberated-regions problems and an interparliamentary committee was formed, composed of all the Senators and Deputies from the invaded and liberated departments. They acted as a liaison and interpreter between their constituents and the Government. Early in 1917 the Minister of the Interior extended his service of reconstitution, organiz- ing a technical bureau for repairing damaged buildings and for the manufacturing of port- able houses. Meanwhile, despite the fact that the war-indemnity bill had not been voted, he was allowed to make advances to returning refugees on account of their eventual indemni- ties. For rebuilding, these advances were not al- lowed to exceed 50 per cent, of the value of the destroyed buildings before the war. Small ad- vances were made to farmers for the things they needed to get for their farms; and ad- vances were made to householders for furniture and tools. Wherever possible, however, the Government provided the articles themselves instead of advancing the cash. 158 OUT OF THE RUUSTS In the spring of 1917, with the German re- treat, five special sous-prSfets were appointed, each to take a specified part of the devastated regions from which the Germans had just been driven out, and to devote all of his energy to rehef and reestablishment. In August, 1917, the French Parliament voted two credits, each of 100,000,000 francs — one to the Ministry of Commerce for the pur- chase of machinery and material needed to re- establish industry in the liberated regions, and the other to the Ministry of Agriculture for the purchase of implements, animals, seed, fer- tilizer, fruit-trees, and even tractors, to help agricultural reconstitution. In the summer of 1917 a special technical service for reconstruction and for putting the soil back into condition for use was created in the Ministry of Pubhc Works. This service took over various of the functions heretofore exercised by the Ministry of the Interior. In November, 1917, it had become so obvious that there must be a single head and direction for all of the civilian work in the liberated re- gions that the Government created a special ministry to handle it, with Monsieur Lebrun ORGANIZATION 159 at its head. It was called the Ministere du Blocus et des Regions Liberees. The minister was expected to handle the problems of the war blockade as well as those of the liberated re- gions. For convenience of handling, the work in the liberated regions was divided into four ser- vices : (1) The Administrative Service, which handled all secretarial matters, such as person- nel, accounting, etc. ; also the reorganization of local hfe, which included relief, bringing back the refugees, reorganizing public services and public health, coordination of the work of pri- vate relief societies, and the appraisal of war damages, including the payment of advances on these damages. ( 2 ) A Technical Service, which included the providing of temporary shelters, barracks, and building-materials ; the repairing of local roads, water-supply, sewage, gas, and improvement in the lay-out of the town; the preparing for permanent reconstruction, including the im- provement of town plans, sanitation, etc. ; and also putting the soil back into condition for use 160 OUT OF THE RUINS by filling up the trenches and shell-holes and by the construction of farm-buildings. (3) An Agricultural Service, called the Office de Reconstitution Agricole, which made advances to returning farmers, of cattle, imple- ments, seeds, and f ertihzer, and sometimes of money. (4) The Industrial Service, called the Office de Reconstitution Industrielle, which bought raw materials, tools, machinery, and other things needed in starting up industrial plants in the hberated regions and which in turn ceded them against eventual war indenmities to the manufacturers of the region. The Administrative Service took over the Bureau of Reconstitution from the Ministry of the Interior. The Technical Service took over the Reconstruction Bureau that had been in operation in the Ministry of Public Works. The Agricultural Service took its functions from the Ministry of Agriculture. The In- dustrial Service took its fimctions from the Ministry of Commerce. Budget allowances in these.four other ministries were turned over to the Ministry of Liberated Regions. ORGANIZATION 161 With the signing of the armistice and the opening up on a vast scale of the work in the devastated regions, three important changes of organization took place: First, the appoint- ment of Monsieur Mauclere as Commissioner- General to work in the Ministry of Liberated Regions in direct collaboration with the minis- ter; second, the decree of November 26, 1918, which changed the Ministry of Armament into a Ministry of Industrial Reconstitution; and third, the creation of an interministerial com- mission presided over by M. Louis Revault, which was charged with coordinating the rela- tionship and projects of the various interested ministries with regard to all urgency work in the liberated regions. As for the first of these changes, the Admin- istrative Service described above continues to be directly under the minister. Monsieur Le- brun, at Paris. But the other services are now directly under the commissioner-general, who acts as a general manager for the ministry. All of the Industrial Service has been taken over by the Ministry of Industrial Reconsti- tution; and the other services under the conv missioner-general are regrouped as follows: 162 OUT OF THE RUINS (1) Agricultural Service, called the Office de Reconstitution Agricole, under the direction of Monsieur Le Seigneur. (2) A Service of Urgency Work, called the Service des Travaux de Premiere Urgence, un- der Monsieur Sillard and Monsieur Despag- nat. (3) A Labor Service, under Lieutenant- Colonel Charles. (4) A Service of Permanent Reconstruc- tion, under Colonel Suquet. (With the resig- nation of Colonel Suquet on July 1, 1919, this service was divided into two parts — Urban Reconstruction, under Monsieur Chifflot, and Riural Reconstruction, under Monsieur Maitrot. (5) A Service of Transportation, imder Lieutenant-Colonel Girard. ( 6 ) A Service of Materials, under Monsieur Porche. (7) A Real Estate Service. The general administrative services under the comptroller-general, Monsieur Chocarne, cover a wide range. He is indirectly respon- sible for the army of people working for the ORGANIZATION 163 ministry (over 300,000 in all) ; but he is partic- ularly interested in the reestabhshment of nor- mal local life in the hberated regions; seeing that local government is reestabhshed and that there are poUce and health services throughout the devastated regions as soon as the popula- tion returns; officially opening up the de- stroyed villages for the return of the refugees just as soon as they can be taken care of; and helping the relief societies and various local re- lief committees to work effectively without treading on one another's toes. At the end of June, 1919, out of 3,400 communes in the lib- erated regions already 2,620 have reestabhshed a local administration. For example, in the department of the Somme, up to April 1, 1919, 204 commimes were functioning. In 137 of these the pre-war mayor had already come back; in 26 more the assistant-mayor was acting as mayor; and in 41 more a municipal counselor was acting as mayor. One hundred and two local police had come back; 107 schools had already been opened and many school-teachers were back for whom no place in which to teach was available. On July 11, there was a congress of mayors 164 OUT OF THE RUINS of the department of the Somme, at which 350 mayors were present. They reported that out of 280,000 inhabitants in their communes be- fore the war, abeady 130,500 had come back. They particularly insisted that the Govern- ment should give priority in every way in all of its services to the devastated regions. One of the most important things that the administrative service of the Ministry of Lib- erated Regions has to look out for is the health of returning refugees. The Germans have de- stroyed or filled up most of the wells. A man told me that he was digging in a field in the devastated regions and, to his surprise, came across a cement pipe. He followed it up and found that one end of it emptied into a com- mimity well, down below the water-level; the other end opened into a large sewage vault, so that as soon as the liquid in the vault rose to a certain level it would automatically flow di- rectly into the well. This diabolical con- trivance would never have been discovered except by accident. An advisory health com- mission of leading French sanitarians meets every two weeks at the Ministry of Liberated Regions to consider the health problems in the ORGANIZATION 165 devastated towns. Their recommendations are put into effect by the Service of Urgency Work. This service has a sanitary inspector and a public-health nurse in each department who are making constant inspection trips. In addition it has a corps of nurses in the Nord who are looking after the health of the school- children. Until after the armistice returning refugees were obliged to have their passes signed both by the mayor or the prefet of their home locality and by that of the place where they were stay- ing as refugees. But since that time one after another the devastated towns have been opened up and the refugees have flocked back as fast as they could find a place in which to live. Refugees are brought back free to their homes and they may bring free from 150 to 165 pounds of baggage with them for each member of the family; they also are allowed to bring free by freight 10 tons of household goods. Up to June 1, 1919, over 3,000,000 people had lo- cated in the liberated regions out of a total of nearly 5,000,000 before the war. There were still between 1,350,000 and 1,500,000 refugees in the interior of France, 80 to 85 per cent, of 166 OUT OF THE RUINS whom were ready to return if only they could be assured of a place to live and a means of sustaining themselves in the devastated re- gions ; but as the homes of over 2,000,000 peo- ple have been destroyed and as there is very little means of earning a livehhood in the lib- erated regions, except by cultivating the farms where the ground has been put back into shape for use, the majority of the refugees prefer to wait a little longer in the interior. A great deal of relief work has been neces- sary, as is shown by the fact that the Govern- ment has already spent over 200,000,000 francs for this purpose, in addition to the enormous sums spent by private relief organizations. The Administrative Service started on July 21, 1919, the publication of a weekly official "Bulletin des Regions Liberees." All govern- ment acts affecting the regions and official an- swers to questions make it a full and most use- ful paper. The appraisal and payment of war damages is destined to be an enormous undertaking. During the first six months of 1919 the Gov- ernment assigned credits to the prSfets total- ing 753,500,000 francs to meet the demands ORGANIZATION 167 for advances against these damages. Mon- sieur Bluzet, the director of this service, told me that up to July 1, 1919, the Government had advanced over 500,000,000 francs on this accovmt. Already several million applications have been filed for indemnities of one sort or another; for reconstruction of buildings, for the reestablishment of agriculture, industry, commerce, or a profession, for furniture, tools, personal effects, stocks and bonds, and even for goods stolen or fines imposed by the Germans. With the passage of the war-indemnity bill on April 17, 1919, steps were immediately taken to organize the cantonal commissions, which would appraise and assess all war dam- ages. Nearly 650 of these commissions have been created; 400 of them are officially open- ing for work on dates varying from July 1 to August 1. The larger cities have a number of commissions ; in Rheims, for instance, there are already eight commissions, with the prospect of more. According to the law, advances are to be made as the work proceeds, but if the to- tal building costs more than the amount al- lowed by the commission, the balance is paid 168 OUT OF THE RUINS by the owner. All kinds of damages are passed upon by these commissions, even those that interest primarily other ministries. The Agricultural Service is in close touch with the Ministry of Agriculture. During 1917, after the German retreat, the Ministry of Agriculture, with its tractor service, plowed more than 80,000 acres of the released land. The French Army plowed about 12,000 acres, while the British Army plowed about 50,000. At that time the French Government owned about 800 tractors and had on order over 1,500 more. Some of these were lost with the Ger- man advance in the spring of 1918, but in the spring of 1919 there were over 1,500 available. During the German retreat in the summer and autumn of 1918, wheat was cut on 130,000 acres of released land. In this work nearly 17,000 men, chiefly soldiers, were employed. Most of this work was done by the Ministry of Agriculture. Meanwhile the Agricultural Service of the Ministry of Liberated Regions is using its credit of 300,000,000 francs and its revolving fund of 100,000,000 francs, to buy materials and to make advances to the return- ing farmers. An extra credit of 100,000,000 ORGANIZATION 169 francs was voted to it on June 30, 1919. By- last April 32,000 horses had actually been de- livered in the devastated regions; 52,000 have been bought from the American Army, 60 per cent, of which have been sent to the devastated regions. Many thousands more are coming from the French Army. Up to June 20, 1919, 61,845 horses and mules had been delivered and 56,800 were on the way. Also 38,650 head of cattle and sheep were delivered or on the way. To bring farming to where it was, 167,000 tons of seed, 1,000,000 tons of seed potatoes, 212,000 tons of fertilizer are needed; 9,364 tons of fertilizer had been delivered by July 1, 1919. Up to July 1, 1919, 104,500,000 francs had been spent for animals, implements, seed, and fertilizer for the devastated regions. These objects are ceded to the refugees by means of local societies, called Societes Tiers Mandataires, organized by the Government. The societies are receiving advances from the Agricultural Service of the ministry, from 200,000 to 800,000 francs each, depending on the area they cover. Meanwhile the Government is making ad- vances to farmers, of 400 francs per acre, to 170 OUT OF THE RUINS help them put their land under cultivation. Of this 240 francs is in the form of cattle, implements, or materials, and the other 160 francs in cash. They have found that if they give a larger proportion of cash the farmer does not put it back into his land, and therefore land is not put back under cultivation as fast as it should be. On the other hand, they have found that with prices as they are to-day it costs nearer 1,200 francs per acre to reestab- lish a farm on a good productive basis. Farm animals are very difficult to get; and the farmer is in no hurry to stock up, because he hopes prices will come down and that later he will get more for his money. There is an interesting side-light on the war damages which many canny farmers have dis- covered: If the commission that awards dam- ages decides that a man has lost 100,000 francs (which at present prices means 300,000 francs) and then if prices fall later so that it wiU cost only 150,000 francs to replace his losses, the proprietor has not the right to put the differ- ence in his pocket; but, on the other hand, he can put it into a better type of machine or a higher grade of cattle. ORGANIZATION 171 To provide fodder for farm animals, the Government has created depots in a number of farm centers where the fodder necessary for a district is accumulated, and once a month the farmers come and get their ration of fodder for a month at a time. During the summer and autumn of 1917 the Agricultural Service founded in the Somme, the Aisne, the Oise, and the Pas-de-Calais, over 120 agricultural cooperative societies in as many villages. These usually included most of the farmers in a village; all told, they had nearly 100,000 acres of land under cultivation. Then came the German advance in the spring of 1918, and all of them were wiped out. Since the armistice the Government has been trying to reorganize these cooperative societies and start new ones, but, strange to say, with comparatively httle success. On the other hand, agricultural syndicates are being formed everywhere. The difference between the co- operative societies and the syndicates is that in the cooperative society the members pool their land, cultivating it in common, and dividing up the profits or losses pro rata. In the syndi- cate, on the other hand, each man cultivates his 172 OUT OF THE RUINS own land and makes what profit he can from it; but the members of the syndicate treat for the purchase of animals, tractors, implements, seed, and fertilizer in common. The Agricultural Service is doing a partic- ularly valuable work in repairing great quanti- ties of broken machines and implements which the Germans have left in the liberated regions. Nearly 6,000 machines had been repaired up to July 4, 1919. In each department the Gov- ernment has one or more large repair shops and assembling plants, where all new machines are sent in to be mounted, as well as old machines to be repaired. In addition the Government is encouraging private enterprise along the same line. In the Somme, for example, there are already six or seven private repair shops. Up to July 4, 1919, about 27,000 machines had been brought back from Germany and dis- tributed in the North. Meanwhile the Agri- cultural Service has ordered about 430,000 im- plements and machines, of which about 125,000 had been delivered by July 4. The Government batteries of tractors are owned and operated by the Ministry of Agri- culture, but the Agricultural Service of the ORGANIZATION 173 Ministry of Liberated Regions determines where they are most needed. Preference is given to agricultural syndicates or cooperative societies. These pay 37 francs an acre for plowing, which is charged up against the eventual war indemnity. Many farmers and farming societies are buy- ing tractors. Eight hundred and eighty have been obtained through the Government. One hundred and twenty have been bought in the department of the Somme alone. The owner pays only half, the balance being charged up against the war indemnity. The price of gas- olene is about 4 fr. 50 a gallon. In the Somme about 500,000 acres of land have been seriously affected by the war. This year fully 125,000 acres are being put back under cultivation, which is about half of the area that is cleared up, ready for use. The rest can't be put back into use until proper shelters can be provided for the farmers. In the whole department of the Somme there have been only two serious accidents so far from tractors or plows striking unexploded shells, although some farmers have turned up as many as twenty shells a day. Since Octo- 174 OUT OF THE RUINS ber, only four people have been killed in the Somme by explosions; most of the accidents have been from hand-grenades. The Forestry Service of the Ministry of Agriculture works in direct collaboration with the Agricultural Service of the Ministry of Liberated Regions. It is starting tree-nurser- ies in a number of places on the edge of the devastated regions. Large numbers of seed- lings are coming from America. In the Somme alone it is planning to forestate about 30,000 acres, for the most part land too churned up to be useful for agriculture. In the northern departments the problem of finding wood for reconstruction is a difficult one. There are comparatively few forests, anyway, and in the best of these the trees are so full of shell sphnters that they cannot be sawed up for lumber. Most of the wood will have to come from outside. The Service of Urgency Work ( Service des Travaux de Premiere Urgence) was organ- ized by Monsieur Mauclere when he became commissioner-general. It was felt that far and away the most important thing in the ORGANIZATION 176 devastated regions was to make it possible for the farmers to return home and to start culti- vating their land again. It was felt to be vitally important for France as a whole that as large crops as possible should be raised dur- ing 1919. It was to concentrate on this idea that the Service of Urgency Work was cre- ated. The main organization of this service and the size and distribution of its personnel was outlined in the chapter on Public Relief. Theoretically it does only work that is needed immediately, emergency work. But it does act also as a contractor for carrying out the projects determined by the architectural and engineering services, even where these run into fairly permanent building or public works repairs and the construction of semi-permanent huts. The whole work is highly organized on lines which combine the best features of the organi- zation of a big contracting company on the one hand, and the Army Engineering Corps on the other. The director of the work in each de- partment is virtually autonomous, and he in turn divides his department into several sectors 176 OUT OF THE RUINS according to the amount of work to be done; each sector in turn being cut up into a number of divisions. The great effort of the Service of Urgency Work is concentrated on clearing the fields of unexploded shells and grenades, removing the barbed wire and filling up the trenches and shell-holes. Almost all of this work, especially the dangerous part of it, is being done by 180,- 000 German prisoners working under French iguards. The German prisoners work directly under the French Army and they are paid fr. 40 a day, plus their food and lodging. The 82,000 French civilians are almost all of them work- ing for French contractors who have been awarded clean-up jobs as the lowest bidders in open competitions. The French civilian em- ployees in the Somme, for example, are paid from 1 fr. 20 to 1 fr. 60 an hour, everything included; in the Pas-de-Calais the men are paid 1 fr. a cubic meter (a httle more than a cubic yard) for filling trenches and shell-holes; men make from 8 frs. to 18 frs. a day, accord- ing to the nature of the soil. Colonial troops are paid 6 frs. a day and it costs 4 frs. a day to ORGANIZATION 177 feed them, lodge them, and look after them, or a total of 10 frs. a day. Where German pris- oners are loaned to civilians to work directly for them, the civilians are charged 7 fr. 90 a day per prisoner, all of which is charged against their eventual indemnity. In a contract in the Somme in June, the contractor was to receive from the State 1 fr, 75 a cubic meter for filling trenches and shell-holes where he did not have to bring his material more than fifty yards, and 3 frs. a cubic meter where he had to bring it more than fifty yards. For clearing away barbed wire he was to be paid fr. 20 for ten square feet, his work to include depositing the barbed wire along the edge of the nearest road- way. This cleaning-up work will be virtually finished by autumn as far as the State is con- cerned, because the farmers can clear up their own ground during the winter, and do it better, and at a lower price than the State is now pay- ing. The Service of Urgency Work is encourag- ing the farmers and others to group themselves in syndicates or cooperative societies to do their own clearing-up work, and it allows them the same current rate that it allows to contractors. 178 OUT OF THE RUINS The town of Villers-Carbonnel, in the Somme, is probably the first town to organize a clear- ing-up cooperative society. In the meantime the reconstruction cooperative societies are de- voting their energies to this while waiting to start reconstruction. The unexploded shells and hand-grenades all through the devastated regions present a most serious problem. The Service of Ur- gency Work, in collaboration with the Army Engineering Corps, has circulated detailed in- structions for the disposing of this material. In a circular of April 19, 1919, instructions were given that all gas-shells should be buried a least seven feet deep and as far as possible from houses, wells, or brooks. Elaborate in- structions are given also for the explosion of other shells and grenades. Most of the acci- dents that have occurred in the devastated re- gions came from carelessness and curiosity on the part of civilians. Full warnings are posted everywhere to caution people against taking risks. The next big problem of the Service of Ur- gency Work is sheltering the returning popu- lation. In the Somme, for example, about a ORGANIZATION 179 thousand French workmen are making rough repairs to the buildings that can most easily be made habitable. A number of other repair jobs have been given out to local contractors; in fact, every individual who will repair his own house or who can build a hut for himself is in every way encouraged to do so. These rough repairs are made gratuitously by the Government on the principle that with so much urgency work to do no one can afford the time to do permanent repairing or reconstruction. After his trip to the liberated regions in July, 1919, Monsieur Clemenceau said that the most urgent matter was to provide adequate shelter there, before winter, for 200,000 persons. The service also puts up barracks and port- able houses that have been furnished to it by the Service of Permanent Reconstruction. About 5,000 of these have already been moimted. In addition, on July 10, 1919, the Service of Urgency Work called for bids on the construction of one hundred semi-perma- nent huts at St. Quentin, from materials taken from the ruins. On July 13 it asked for an- other group to be erected near Chateau- Thierry. In this connection it is interesting to 180 OUT OF THE RUINS recall that the French Government decided on December 12, 1918, that all the materials that come out of the ruins belong to the Government and the Government only. The great problem still before the Service of Urgency Work is clearing away the ruins of the destroyed buildings. It was estimated that this alone is going to cost over 2,000,000,- 000 francs. So far the service itself does no systematic clearing, but on the request of the mayor it has often loaned some of its German prisoners or other workmen to individuals where they had to have a site cleared away in order to reestablish themselves. In a few places — as at Bethune, Arras, Lens, Ham, Rheims, etc. — contracts have already been let for the clearing away of ruins, and contracts are being let at Lille, St. Quentin, Albert, Soissons, and Verdun. In fact, the work at Bethune is already well advanced. At Arras the contractors have tried doing the work with an English steam shovel, but so far contractors have preferred to do all the work by hand on account of the complicated mixture of mate- rials in the cellar-holes. A commission goes over the ruins before they are cleared away and ORGANIZATION 181 decides just what standing walls should be kept. If it were not for this, it would be easy to blow up all of the standing walls and then dig out everything at once with mechanical ap- pliances. There is another complication, however, and that is the unexploded ammunition that one often finds in the ruins. In Lens a man a day has been killed in the clearing-up process, in most cases, however, through carelessness. The most interesting example of the clear- ing away of the ruins is the recent case at Rheims: A typical portion of the city, about one tenth of its area, was let out to bid to con- tractors from anywhere in France. About forty sent in estimates to the Service of Ur- gency Work, stating how much they demanded over or xmder the unit price schedule fixed by the Government. The Government said that it considered the general run of material in the ruins to be worth 10 francs a cubic meter carted away and dumped where designated by the city. Then it named a number of different kinds of material that could be sorted out from the mass and said that for each cubic meter of stone sorted out it considered 45 francs a fair 182 OUT OF THE RUINS price ; for each thousand bricks with the plaster scraped off, 30 francs; for steel and iron, 70 francs a ton; and for lead or zinc 400 to 500 francs a ton. The contract was let to the low- est bidder, who offered to do the work for 27 per cent, less than the government estimate. The contract was let on April 17, 1919, and he has a year in which to do the work. Mean- while the government engineers are watching the work very closely to determine on what basis they should let similar contracts generally in other cities in the devastated regions. A list of towns has been prepared for clear- ing up in the order of their relative urgency, the manufacturing towns being placed first on the list. Another important job of the Service of Urgency Work is the repairing or construct- ing of new narrow-gage railways. The serv- ice has made a thorough survey of the circu- lation of trucks and the need of materials in the devastated regions, and it is preparing to lay down narrow-gage railways along all lines of heavy trafiic, as the railways can be operated more cheaply than motor-trucks. The Service of Urgency Work is also ORGANIZATION 183 charged with the sanitary work in the devas- tated regions. If the medical and sanitary in- spector attached to the Service of Permanent Reconstruction, or to the Administrative Serv- ice of the Ministry, says that a well should be cleaned out, or that a cistern should be emptied, or that chloride of lime should be spread about, or that a swamp should be filled up to get rid of mosquitos, it is the Service of Urgency Work that has to carry out the order. Wher- ever possible the work is let out by contract; otherwise the service does it directly with its own labor. Already hundreds of wells have been put back into use. Privy vaults are usually cleaned out by private contractors. There is very little more to be said about the Labor Service than has been said. The re- cruiting and control of labor is a great prob- lem in itself. It will become an even more dif- ficult problem with the return of the German prisoners to Germany, although more and more the work will be done by private initia- tive and private contracts, and the State will be rid of the necessity of finding the required labor. Each local service and each contractor, cooperative society, or individual that needs 184 OUT OF THE RUINS labor sends in its demand through the Service of Urgency Work. The Transportation Service of the Ministry of Liberated Regions is a most essential part of the organization. Without it nothing could ftmction. In June, 1919, the minister re- ported to the Chamber of Deputies that he was expending 9,300,000 francs a month on his transportation service. However, this service did a great deal of work in the devastated re- gions for other ministries. On June 1, 1919, there were 8,190 vehicles of all sorts working for the ministry. There were 6,633 chauffeurs and mechanicians, 324 foremen, and 165 men in charge of the different services. During the month of May, 1919, they hauled nearly 9,000,- 000 ton miles. The Transportation Service is trying to replace its heaviest traffic routes by narrow-gage railways to save time and ex- pense. These railways are to be built by the Service of Urgency Work. There were a great many of these narrow-gage railways in the devatsated regions before the war and the German Army and also the Alhed armies built great systems of them for war piu-poses. Many of these stiU exist in a more or less dam- ORGANIZATION 185 aged condition, but in order to serve the new needs many of them will have to be changed to new routes. The Service of Permanent Reconstruction is the important service of the future. So far it has done little more than make plans, control repairs, order the construction of barracks and portable houses, found reconstruction coopera- tive societies, and lay in stocks of material for the future. This last-named duty has recently been taken away from it and organized into a new service called the Service of Materials. However, it is this service that is the logical successor of the technical service of reconstruc- tion that used to be in the Ministry of the In- terior and later in the Ministry of Public Works, which conducted all of the govern- ment repair work in the Somme, the Aisne, and the Oise in 1917. That service had about a thousand German prisoners and a thousand civilians working under French contractors during the better part of that year. To-day the Service of Permanent Recoia- struction is responsible for all permanent re- building. Its duty is to coordinate all the dif- ferent efforts, to direct them, to watch the ap- 186 OUT OF THE RUINS plication of the various laws affectjng rebuild- ing and the awarding of war damages. It has three main sections. The first is in close touch with the Service of Urgency Work, furnishing it with portable houses, furniture, hardware, windows, doors, and trusses. The second sec- tion has to do with the eventual reconstruction of toAvn and cities; it sees to the preparing of proper improved plans for the towns, and in general controls building and the use of ad- vances made against the eventual war indemni- ties; it encourages the creation of reconstruc- tion cooperative societies. A third section does the same thing for rural communities and villages that the preceding section does for urban communities. The Permanent Reconstruction Service has its own representative in each department with a number of local representatives scattered throughout the department. During 1917 the predecessor of the service made contracts for the construction of about 15,000 portable houses with two or three rooms and a shed, and also for several thousand farm- buildings. The houses cost from 3,700 to 5,000 francs apiece; the farm-buildings cost ORGANIZATION 187 from 1,000 to 4,500 francs apiece. These buildings were ceded to the returning refugees at one half of what they cost the Government, with the understanding that even this half could be charged against the applicant's eventual war indemnity. If he preferred, he could lease a house at amounts varying from 88 to 148 francs a year, and where he could not even afford that, the Government would pay the rent. The farm-buildings were sold only, with the expectation that they would be made permanent by the filling in of the spaces be- tween the uprights of the frame with masonry or other durable material. Between 3,000 and 4,000 portable houses had been set up in the Somme, the Aisne, and the Oise before the German advance in the spring of 1918. When the Germans were swept back in the late summer of 1918 it was found that almost all of these buildings had been de- stroyed. Now 75,000 portable buildings are on order. Already about 10,000 of them have been sent to the devastated regions. About 4,500 of them have been set up to date by the Service of Urgency Work, They cost a little more 188 OUT OF THE RUINS now because of the higher price of materials, the range for the houses being from 4,400 francs for two rooms and a shed, to 7,400 francs for four rooms and a shed. On March 17, 1918, the Reconstruction Serv- ice of the ministry asked for bids on various types of furniture, including wardrobes, tables, chairs, cupboards, wooden beds and iron beds — 75,000 articles in all. These were allotted to refugee applicants on a basis of 245 francs for the wardrobe, 80 francs for the cupboard, 58 francs for a table, 11 francs for a chair, and 51 to 60 francs for a bed — all to be charged against the eventual war indemnity. Since the armistice these orders have been greatly in- creased and government contracts for war ma- terials were transformed into contracts for refugee furniture, doors, windows, hardware, etc. On December 20, 1918, bids were asked for 12,000 combination school tables and benches. On April 10, 1919, bids were asked on 50,000 iron beds, each four feet wide. On July 23, 1918, the Government asked for bids on 20,400 exterior doors, 42,000 interior doors, 40,200 windows, and 25,000 shutters. Since the ar- ORGANIZATION 189 mistice these figures have been increased by orders given to the holders of war contracts, so that now 110,000 standardized windows and 90,000 standardized doors are on order. A lit- tle later orders were placed for a number of wooden trusses of standardized sizes ; also, for a number of managers. On December 20, 1918, bids were asked on several milhon articles of hardware of all sorts and kinds. There were over 3,200,000 hinges in this order. On the same date bids were asked on several hun- dred thousand faucets and other plumbing- supplies. The Service of Permanent Reconstruction is making experiments in the economizing of materials and construction in rebuilding. It has erected an experimental building of pise^ similar to adobe, in Paris, to see what recom- mendations should be made with regard to the use of the material. As a result of this experi- ence an interesting pamphlet has been pub- lished for the use of builders in the devastated regions. The service also has been studying model house and farm-building plans for the devas- tated regions. This has resulted in t)ie pub- 190 OUT OF THE RUINS lication, in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, of two volumes entitled "Model Types of Agricultural Buildings." In general there is very little permanent re- building going on as yet, and the Government is not encouraging it, because all of the labor, transportation, and materials available are not even enough to supply the urgency demands for getting the fields back imder cultivation, sheltering the returning refugees, and taking care of the sanitation of the communities. Oc- casional individuals, or groups of individuals, have gone ahead on their own initiative with permanent rebuilding, especially some of the larger manufacturers who could proceed with- out having to wait for their war indemnities. But in ablest every case, urgency work has been given priority over permanent reconstruc- tion. In preparing for reconstruction on a big scale the great need is for a central service in the Ministry of Liberated Regions, which can help contractors get started in the devastated regions, pay their labor until they begin to receive payment on their contracts, and help lodge and feed their labor in the devastated re- ORGANIZATION 191 gions; and which can also provide them with the machinery, tools, and materials needed for wholesale reconstruction. Such a project was adopted by the Chamber of Deputies on May 23, 1919, which carried with it a credit of 300,- 000,000 francs, but it has not yet been voted on by the Senate. Until something of this sort is put into effect large-scale reconstruction will be most difficult. The Service of Permanent Reconstruction actively encourages the creation of reconstruc- tion cooperative societies, because experience has shown that through them the returning refugees can be much more easily dealt with and that considerable time and money can be saved both by the State and individuals if the latter can only be persuaded to reconstruct co- operatively instead of separately. To help in the founding of these societies the Service of Permanent Reconstruction has issued a model constitution and by-laws for societies of this sort and also a number of suggestions for their formation and operation. It gives them books to keep their accounts in, an account-book for each member, and from time to time sends an inspector around to verify them. Four of 192 OUT OF THE RUINS these were formed in 1916 in the department of the Marne, in villages destroyed in 1914. They have already rebuilt most of their vil- lages and their experience has been of the greatest value in the present campaign. Replanning the devastated towns is a par- ticularly important part of the work of the Service of Permanent Reconstruction. The Government started to take hold of this prob- lem nearly three years ago, when in a circular letter sent to the prSfets of the invaded de- partments on September 27, 1916, the Min- ister of the Interior instructed them to study how they could improve the plans of their towns. He told them that there were three outstanding things that should be considered: (1) circulation in the streets; (2) sanitation and pubKc health; (3) the esthetic character of the town. This circular was particularly in- sistent that they should have plans made at once for improved street alignment and grad- ing; if this could be done, it would allow the community to take advantage of a law of April 5, 1884, which says that when buildings are demolished or when they have fallen in ruins. ORGANIZATION 198 they must conform to the new alignment and grade when rebuilt, and the town has to pay only for the land. In a circular of December 11, 1916, the Min- ister of the Interior asked the prefets to start plans even for communities that were stiU in the hands of the enemy. In a circular of No- vember 12, 1917, he again urged them to make these pland and to report to him by December 31, 1917, what they had done. Unfortunately the reports brought almost no results. Then came the famous town-planning law of March 14, 1919, which ordered that plans should be made for improving all devastated areas, and the communes were given three months in which to get started. On March 15, 1919, the Minister of Liberated Regions sent a circular to the prefets of the liberated depart- ments in which he ordered that nothing except temporary shelters be built without the consent of the departmental town-planning commis- sion, until improved town plans had been made and put into effect. The services of the Bureau of Roads and Highways of the Minis- try of Public Works were offered for making 194 OUT OF THE RUINS surveyors' maps of the towns, because the maps of most of the towns had been destroyed by the Germans. Each commune was asked to consider care- fully whether or not it might be desirable to re- move the whole town or some part of the town to a new site. In any case, however, it was ordered to make immediately street-alignment and grading plans, and a rough general plan for the improvement, embellishment, and ex-' tension of the whole commune. Furthermore, it was directed to establish a program of work in the order of relative urgency of the various things to be done. The plans are to be paid for by the State, but each commime is free to choose its own ex- perts. The Departmental Town-Planning Commission is ready to give advice at any time. In the department of the Nord this commis- sion, which is composed of seventy members, held its first meeting on June 4, 1919. The other departments are rapidly getting under way. ; To help the communes to understand a little better what is being attempted, the Permanent Reconstruction Service has issued two pam- ORGANIZATION 195 phlets describing in detail the problems to be considered. One pamphlet deals with urban communities, the other with rural conmiunities. Special stress is laid on sanitation. The prefets each have lists of a,ccredited town-planning experts which they give to the commimes on request. While the city of Lille was still in the hands of the Germans it began to study the eventual improvement of its plan, and collected much necessary preliminary data. Its plans are now nearly matured. One of their chief features is the tearing down of the walls all around the town. This will give the city six himdred acres of parks in addition to the sites for many houses for working-men. Plans for Revigny and Clermont-en-Ar- gonne, in the Meuse, were made back in 1916. A plan for Tracy-le-Val, in the Oise, and stud- ies for the plans of Albert and Arras were made by La Renaissance des Cites in 1917. For Rheims, since the beginning of the war, architects, engineers, and landscape archite^s have been making suggestions as to how ij|Js: could be improved. Since the armistice the city has brought together and put on exhibi- 196 OUT OF THE RUINS tion nineteen of these projects. It has called in some of the best experts in the country to tell it what are the good and the bad features in each plan; the city has woven all of these suggestions together and presented the results to the citizens for their approval. At the end of June, 1919, the city adopted the plans and notified property-owners that they must not rebuild except in conformity with them; the plans show a big open garden behind the cathedral, the widening out of the main thor- oughfares, and the cutting through of several new cross-thoroughfares to handle modern traffic; they also show the creation of several big new industrial districts and the eventual creation of at least five garden suburbs for working-men. Under the auspices of La Renaissance des Cites the city of Chauny, the. principal glass- manufacturing city of the devastated regions, gave twenty-five thousand francs in prizes and opened an inter-allied competition for an im- proved town plan. A number of interesting suggestions were presented for improving Chauny by preserving the charm of the old town and at the same time adapting it to mod- THE WHOLE TOWN OP DIXMUDE IN APRIL, 1919 French Official Photo. HOUSE AT GRUNY REPAIRED BY FRIENDS A COLONY ERECTED BY THE ENGLISH FRIENDS FRIENDS PUTTING UF ONE OF THEIR OWN PORTABLE HUTS ORGANIZATION 197 em industrial needs. The winning plan, by Monsieur Rey, was especially good. Armentieres and Montdidier have virtually completed their plans; other plans are well under way for Valenciennes, Arras, Al- bert, St. Quentin, Roye, Coucy-le- Chateau, Vailly, Compiegne, Vienne-le-Chateau, Ver- dun, Nancy, Pont-a-Mousson, Nomeny, and Belf ort. Several hundred other towns and vil- lages have either started their plans or are ex- pecting to do so at once. The greatest diffi- culty with this work lies in persuading the vil- lages that their lay-outs could be improved and that they should employ a real expert to advise them. Now that the great competition is open for improving the lay-out of Paris and its en- virons, town-planning is sure to receive a spe- cial impetus. Little permanent reconstruction has been done so far, as the Government is discouraging it for the time being. Except for what was done in 1919, ahnost all of it is in towns that were destroyed in 1914. Gerbeviller, in the Metirthe-et-Moselle, which was wilfully de- stroyed by the Germans in their first retreat, shows already about forty buildings recon- 198 OUT OF THE RUINS structed by private contract ; there has been no official control over their construction or de- sign, with the result that they do not augur well for the charm of the town when it is all re- constructed, but they are fairly solidly built and serve their purposes as well as the build- ings that were there before. The farm-town of Vassincourt, near Bar-le- Duc, has fared much better. The proprietors have fallen into the hands of a good architect, who has rebuilt most of the farm groups; all of the charm of the best of the buildings that were there before the war reappears in most of these new buildings, and in addition they have a convenience, efficiency, and economy of plan which most of the former buildings lacked. To give an idea of present-day prices, we find that the rebuilding 6| a large house and farm buildings costs 75, OOd francs ; a six-room house alone costs 20,000 fraries ; a farm barn and two living-rooms costs 24,000 francs. Sermaize-les-Bains and Pargny, also de- stroyed in the Battle of the Marne, are already about one quarter rebuilt. Like Gerbeviller, they were rebuilt by private contract, but they were a little more fortunate in their architects. ORGANIZATION 199 MucK more interesting is the reconstruction that has gone on in the twelve villages west of Vitry-le-rran9ois, that were destroyed in the Battle of the Marne, They have grouped themselves together in four cooperative socie- ties with one architect and one contractor for all of the work of each society. Already nearly 150 buildings have been reconstructed in these villages at a cost of about 2,000,000 francs. While the buildings are not so charm- ing as those at Vassincourt, nevertheless most of them are more practical than the buildings they replace, and if all of the destroyed villages could be rebuilt as well, there would be very lit- tle need to worry about the future of the region. However, the crowr^pg example of recon- struction is the work done by two American women; Mrs. Crocker and Miss Daisy Polk, of California, have presented in the little vil- lage of Vitrimont, in the Meurthe-et-Moselle, a sample of reconstruction that all should see. I was there in October, 1916, just as fifty French workmen were arriving in the com- pletely destroyed village to rebuild it accord- ing to the plan of the departmental architect. Over half qf the villagers had retyni^d and 200 OUT OF THE RUINS were making out an existence as best they might under the tottering walls of what had been their homes. The manure heaps were still out in front of the houses and everywhere there was litter and sordidness. It was most un- promising, but Miss Polk was full of com-age. In the spring of 1919 I revisited the town. Here were clean, charming houses, gay with their bright painted doors and shutters, with bigger windows, baths, better sanitary arrange- ments; sewers and electric lights. The ma- nure heaps and broken wagons in front of the houses had been replaced by trees and grass- plots. The whole town had an air of well- being and self-respect that made one hope that the lesson would be taken to heart throughout the length and breadth of the devastated regions. The Americans had gone; the work was done, the proprietors having signed over to their benefactors any indemnity they may eventually get from the Government; but the memory of their passage remains in the name of the principal street "la rue de Californie." In many cities and towns where the damage was comparatively slight, such as Amiens, we find' a good deal of rebuilding actually started, ORGANIZATION 201 but most of the refugees prefer to wait until they know just what their war damage from the Government is going to amount to. It is expected, however, that by the spring of 1920 permanent reconstruction will start actively. Meanwhile, in addition to laying in stocks of materials, the Government is spending a great deal of time in each department in establishing unit standard prices for building-construction on which contracts can be based. In general the Permanent Reconstruction Service is divided into two parts — ^the urban division in charge of an architect, and the rural division in charge of an agricultural engineer; each has his representative in charge of the work in each department; towns of from six hundred to one thousand people and over are handled by the architect, and the rest by the agricultural engineer. The latter handles from two hundred to four hundred commimes in each department, and the former handles from thirty to eighty. Even in rural commu- nities the architect usually handles all pubhc buildings, churches, and chateaux. The archi- tect in collaboration with the agricultural en- gineer controls the planning of the rural com- 202 OUT OF THE RUINS munities. The engineer encourages the form- ation of agricultural syndicates; both he and the architect organize reconstruction coopera- tive societies wherever they can. Both of them are devoting most of their attention just now to making programs and laying out work for the Service of Urgency Work; the architect orders the portable houses that are mounted by the Service of Urgency Work, and the en- gineer orders the portable farm-buildings. The question of raw materials is a most im- portant one in temporary as well as in perma- nent reconstruction. On October 22, 1916, the predecessor of the Permanent Reconstruc- tion Service published a report showing the distribution of quarries, and in general show- ing where the raw materials could be obtained in or near the devastated regions. It showed, for example, that good building-stone could be found in almost all of the hberated depart- ments, except the Nord and the Somme ; there is good brick clay in almost all of the depart- ments, especially in the Nord. The great diffi- culty, however, is getting the coal needed for burning the brick. There is plenty of good building-sand in all of the departments; ce- ORGANIZATION^ 203 merit can be produced in large quantities in the Pas-de-Calais, the Marne, the Meuse, and the Meurthe-et-Moselle, provided, of course, that the necessary coal is available. Most of the departments can furnish plenty of lime, which probably will be much used in reconstruction. Tile can be produced in quan- tity and roofing-slates exist in large quantities in the Ardennes and the Meurthe-et-Moselle, and to a lesser extent in the Nord and the Pas- de-Calais, The Ardennes used to have hun- dreds of little shops that produced hardware. Glass comes from the Nord, the Aisne, and from Belgium. There is little wood available in the Nord, the Pas-de-Calais, or the Somme. In the eastern departments, however, there are still large quantities available. The chief dif- ficulty with regard to all of these materials will be in getting the tools and machinery needed for extracting and preparing them for use. The Reconstruction Research and Educa- tional Service of the American Red Cross made maps for each of the liberated depart- ments, showing the location of each quarry, bed, and outcropping of material that might 204 OUT OF THE RUINS be used in reconstruction ; these maps are now being published by La Renaissance des Cites. The Permanent Reconstruction Service bought building-materials where it could and began to create stocks in various centers in the liberated regions. By the beginning of May, 1919, this service began to assume an impor- tance that made it desirable to create a sep- arate Service of Materials. The particular duty of this service is to make a survey of the conditions in the devastated regions, to see just what is going to be needed in the way of build- ing-materials, and in what quantities. It then looks over the available supply of each ma- terial and wherever it finds a material that the market is not providing in sufficient quantities it either lays in a stock from some outside source or it makes arrangements with the Min- ister of Industrial Reconstitution to increase its extraction and preparation for use. It will cede these materials to the returning refugees either through a citizens' pxirchasing board like that associated with the Ministry of Industrial Reconstitution, or through a local Societe Tiers Mandataire similar to those associated with the Agricultural Reconstitution Service. AMERICAN RED CROSS TRUCKS UNLOADING RELIEF SUPPLIES At the Town Hall in Peronne to be distributed by French Red Cross. THE LIVING-QUARTERS OF THE SMITH COLLEGE RELIEF UNIT AT GRECOURT, SOMME VITRIMONT, MEURTHE-ET-MOSELLE The only destroyed villagre in France that is now completely rebuilt. THE TEAVELING STORE OF THE SMITH COLLEGE RELIEF UNIT AT CANIZY, SOMME ORGANIZATION 205 On the first of June, 1919, the Service of Materials asked for bids on the following ma- terials: 60,000 tons of hydraulic lime, 40,000 tons of cement, 40,000 tons of ordinary lime, 1,000 tons of plaster of Paris, 20,000,000 bricks, 20,000,000 hollow bricks, 20,000,000 roofing-tiles, all of which would be delivered as soon as possible in the devastated regions. At the same time many of the liberated de- partments have been asking for bids on sim- ilar materials on their own account. On December 12, 1918, a law was passed which authorized the State to requisition all cvurent building-materials coming from whoUy or partly destroyed buildings in the devastated regions. The State allows the owner the ap- praised value of the materials, and the owner cannot touch the materials himself unless the State officials allow him to do so. In letting contracts for clearing up the ruins the State expects the contractor to cull out of the debris all materials that can be reemployed in building. The Service of Materials stores them against eventual use. The Service of Materials is in close touch with the liquidation boards of the French, 206 OUT OF THE RUINS British, and American armies; already large quantities of materials have been ceded to it on the spot by the French Army. As an ex- ample of how this works in practice, the Minis- ter of Liberated Regions has just authorized the temporary reconstruction of the village of Hombleux in the Somme by the use of materi- als from a French army dump in the neighbor- hood. Immense quantities of materials have al- ready been taken over from the British Army and negotiations are concluded with the Ameri- can Army to take over its supply. Up until June 20, 1919, few building-mate- rials could be imported into France, but on that date the door was opened and almost every- thing that goes into building was given unre- stricted entrance, except for a control over the quality. Most raw -materials are free of cus- toms' duties. Another feature of the Service of Materials is the work it is doing in experimenting with building materials and construction to see what can be done to save time, money, and transpor- tation. In March, 1919, the Permanent Re- construction Service published an interesting ORGANIZATION 207 report on the results of its experiments in the use of adobe, mud bricks, and other unbaked materials. In former titnes there used to be a good deal of construction with these materials in eastern and northern France. At St. Quentin and Chateau- Thierry the Government has recently contracted for the building of sev- eral hundred houses of sun-dried mud and debris. At Noyon, the city coimcil is planning to re- construct the stores of the town of concrete. Lens had already begun to make large quanti- ties of cinder concrete. In Rheims, several of the big manufacturers are making their own mud bricks for the reconstruction of their fac- tories, even using earth dug up on their own ground; these bricks are costing thirty-five francs a thousand. The department of the Somme has been building experimental houses of various sorts of debris coming from the ruins, and the results have been very satisfactory. The Reconstruction Research Service of the American Red Cross and the Service of Mate- rials of the Ministry of Liberated Regions have collaborated in making a number of tests 208 OUT OF THE RUINS on agglomerates made of various sorts of ma- terials from the ruins, with di£ferent binders, to see what would be most economical and most effective in reconstruction; meanwhile the Office du Batiment, which consists of tiie lead- ing engineers, architects, and contractors of France, is making with the collaboration of the Ministry of Liberated Regions a thorough study of the standardization of building-mate- rials and methods, and has sent a commission of its best men to America to see what of American methods are applicable in the devas- tated regions, and what American materials and machinery should be brought over. There are, furthermore, in connectioii with the Ministry of Commerce a series of technical advisory commissions, several of which are ad- vising the ministry on its importation pohcy with regard to building-materials and machin- ery. For the last six months of 1918, we find that the Minister of Liberated Regions was allowed a budgetary credit for aU of his services of 461,000,000 francs. He spent diwiug that time almost 66,000,000 francs ; diu-ing the pre- vious six months he spent 52,000,000 francs. ORGANIZATION 209 For the first six months of 1919 he had a budgetary credit of 2,146,000,000 francs. During January, February, March, and April he spent nearly 282,000,000 francs. During May he spent 198,000,000 fraiics. The amount is rapidly increasing each month. For July, August, and September, 1919, he has asked for a budgetary credit of 2,106,000,000 francs, of which nearly 1,000,000,000 is for the Service of Urgency Work, and another 1,000,- 000,000 is for payments on account of war damages. ^ The North was the greatest industrial center of France. The destruction of the factories has not only stopped hfe in the hberated re- gions but has been a most serious blow to the economic life of France as a whole. It is of the utmost importance that the destroyed in- dustries should be put back into operation as soon as possible. The whole reestablishment of the hberated regions is dependent on it. The first active step that was taken to bring back these industries was the creation of an organization of manufacturers in the first year of the war ; this group was called L' Association Centrale pour la Reprise de I'Activite Indus- 210 OUT OF THE RUINS trielle dans les Regions Envahies. Most of the industrial people whose plants had suffered joined it. It soon became apparent that the chief thing needed was the creation in advance of large stocks of machinery and materials so that these would be ready for use at the end of the war. However, under the French law an association like this cannot trade, and so a purchasing board was created, with a capital of 1,000,000 francs, which was called the Comp- toir Central d' Achats Industriels pour les Regions Envahies. Meanwhile the association secured the pas- sage of a law on August 6, 1917, which created a Government service of Industrial Reconsti- tution attached to the Ministry of Commerce. This service was voted a budgetary credit of 250,000,000 francs and a revolving-fimd of 100,000,000 francs. As this Government serv- ice was not allowed to buy large quantities of machinery and materials itself, it made use of the private purchasing board that has just been described as its purchasing agent. Its private capital of 1,000,000 francs was consid- ered to be its evidence of responsibility and good faith. The government service pays all ORGANIZATION 211 overhead expenses and 5 per cent, interest on the paid-in private capital. The association, the purchasing board and the government service collaborate in working up a program of purchasing. The purchasing board can buy directly for a private individual or it can constitute general stocks for distribution later. The recipient can pay for machinery or ma- terials in cash, or he can have the total charged up against his eventual war indemnity. Until recently the Govermnent has advanced no cash to individual manufacturers for the purchase of machinery or goods, because it wanted to save money by wholesale buying and to pre- vent the unfortunate effect on the market of the competition of a number of little buyers bidding against one another. With the creation of the Ministry of Liber- ated Regions in November, 1917, the Indus- trial Reconstitution Service was transferred to the new ministry. It remained with this min- istry until November 26, 1918, when by decree of the Government the Ministry of Armament was changed into a Ministry of Industrial Re- constitution. Then the whole industrial serv- ice was again transferred to the latest minis- 212 OUT OF THE RUINS try. Until this last transfer the government service and the purchasing board had effected purchases to the amount of about 65,000,000 francs; in addition it had prepared orders for machinery, tools, and raw materials, especially in connection with the reconstitution of the coal-mines, to the amoimt of about 200,000,000 francs. Other orders to the extent of about 150,000,000 francs were being prepared for the textile industry, breweries, sugar-mills, etc. The decree of November 26, 1918, provided for changing over munition plants to peace- time manufacture. The ministry has been voted budgetary credits of over 1,000,000,000 francs to forward this work. Up to July 1, 1919, over 800,000,000 francs had been en- gaged in buying machinery and goods; virtu- ally all of this was expended through the pur- chasing board. The ministry consists of an administrative service, several technical services, a service for the recuperation of material taken into Ger- many, and a financial service. The liberated regions are divided into seven sectors, with cor- responding services in each sector. When a manufacturer wants government help in get- ORGANIZATION 213 ting started, he makes his application to the headquarters of the sector, accompanying it with a detailed statement of his losses. This statement is checked up by the government of- ficials and on the basis of it he is aUowed a credit against which the Government grants him machinery and goods. The ministry also makes him advances of money with the under- standing that it shall be used only for repairing his machinery or buildings and as a working- capital for starting the operation of his plant. The ministry helps him secure trucks and bar- racks from the army. It secures for him pri- ority of manufacture of the things he needs and a priority of purchase on the things that the army is liquidating. The ministry, in collaboration with the asso- ciation, has been trying to create industrial cooperative societies. One society has been formed among the textUe manufacturers of Fourmies and another among the sugar-manu- facturers at Roye. The principle of these co- operative societies consists in rebuilding and starting up in common one factory after an- other as fast as labor and machinery are avail- able, and dividing up the profits pro rata 214 OUT OF THE RUINS among the members of the society. Aside from allowing all to get some start immedi- ately, the cooperative plan means a consider- able saving to all by permitting an extensive standardization of building-plants, machinery, tools, and stock. The ministry has issued seven interesting pamphlets ; the first two have to deal with the recuperation of machines and stocks stolen by the Germans. This service is actively at work, with agents all through Germany, and already thousands of machines identified by their own- ers are on their way back to Paris. The next two pamphlets describe in detail how the manufacturer who has suffered war damage should make out his application for advances of money or goods. The next two tell him how to go to work to get machinery, raw materials, and other goods. The remain- ing pamphlet advises him how to secure labor for starting up his plant. On this subject the Ministry of Labor is in close touch with the Ministry of Industrial Reconstitution and as soon as a plant is ready to function, even if only in small part, the Ministry of Labor ad- vertises for workers. ORGANIZATION 215 Meanwhile the Ministry of Industrial Re- constitution is constantly advertising for bids on the construction or repair of industrial buildings. At Lens the ministry is getting forty-three big pumps to pump out the mines. Already several hundred manufacturing- plants have started up again more or less com- pletely; a few mines have been reopened and a number of quarries and brick- or lime-kilns have again started in operation. Since the creation of the Ministry of Liber- ated Regions in November, 1917, the Ministry of Public Works has confined its operations in the devastated regions to the railroads, canals, and main highways. It has an extensive and well-organized personnel in these regions which has made a remarkable showing since the armistice. In addition the Bureau of Bridges and Highways has worked in direct collaboration with the Ministry of Liberated Regions in cre- ating and handling stocks of building-materials which are controlled by the latter. In a report made by the Minister of Public Works to the President of the French Repub- lic, on July 6, 1919, we find that on the Nord 216 OUT OF THE RUINS Railroad there were only fifteen miles of track which had not yet been repaired, less than 1 per cent, of the total destroyed by the Ger- mans, On the mining railroads over half had been repaired. On the Est Railroad only 165 mUes remained unrepaired, or about 10 per cent, of what the enemy had destroyed. All but forty-two railway stations had been re- paired. About half of the narrow-gage railways have already been repaired. The work on the bridges and tunnels is proceeding rapidly. With regard to the canals and waterways, a large number of contracts were let for then- repair on December 13, 1918. On July 15, 1919, 19,000 employees were at work. Al- ready nearly 200 miles of canals were back in use, that is about 30 per cent, of the total damage. Three of the canals, however, are completely destroyed and cannot be put back into use until 1920. Despite the fact that over 60,000 miles of highways were damaged and over 2,000 bridges and tunnels destroyed, 4,000 yards of temporary bridges had been built and 5,000 miles of the worst road had been rebuilt, for ORGANIZATION 217 which over 500,000 tons of materials had been used. Contracts have already been let for re- constructing most of the bridges and tunnels, and the work is proceeding rapidly. Many of the most beautiful buildings in France were in the regions that were devas- tated. Of the historic monuments that were under the care of the State, 235 have been damaged; many have been destroyed and are beyond all hope of restoration. Monsieur Lafferre, the Minister of PubHc Instruction and Fine Arts, and his able associate, Mon- sieur Paul Leon, directly in charge of the monuments historiques, have been actively at work since the beginning of the war, trying to preserve what they could with the small fund and personnel available. Paintings and sculptures and objects of an art or historical interest they have removed to a place of safety. Thus the wonderful tapes- tries in the cathedral at RJieims were saved in the first days of the war. Up to March, 1918, very little of the glass had been damaged at Rheims, but then the Germans started throw- ing big 16-inch shells into the cathedral with most disastrous effect on the glass. The archi- 218 OUT OF THE RUINS tect of the cathedral, Monsieur Deneux, tried to get help from the French Army to remove the glass to a place of safety. But as he could find no one who could climb up on those dizzy heights without a staging, he went down to Paris and brought up six firemen who, despite the fact they were being fired on constantly by German snipers, succeeded in saving three- quarters of the glass. All of the best glass was removed from a number of other cathedrals and churches, such as Amiens, Beauvais, St. Denis, Chartres, and from Notre-Dame and the Sainte-ChapeUe in Paris. Everywhere that it was possible the Ministry of Fine Arts protected with a deep covering of sand-bags works of art that could not be removed. The delicate choir stalls at Amiens, the beautiful iron grilles around the Place Stanislas in Nancy, all of the fountains at Ver- sailles, and hundreds of sculptures in Paris, were rendered safe from everything except a big shell or bomb falhng directly upon them. All during the war the Ministry of Fine Arts was sending men here and there in the devastated regions with tarpaulin and tarred ORGANIZATION 219 paper, to protect ruins and to prevent their further disintegration by the weather. Mean- while, as the war proceeded, men were sent out systematically to cover the devastated regions and to list just what had been stolen or de- stroyed. On May 16, 1919, M. Louis Marin pre- sented a report to the Chamber of Deputies, asking for an emergency appropriation for the Ministry of Fine Arts of 4,006,400 francs to do the work that had to be done at once to preserve the monuments until such time as they can be restored permanently. In certain places like Soissons, Laon, St. Quentin, Chalons-sur-Marne, Verdun, Arras, and Cambrai, the Ministry of Fine Arts pro- ceeded at once, without waiting for a budg- etary credit, to put a temporary protection over what was left of the buildings. In this way, during the first six months of 1919, 2,575,- 000 francs had been spent. To remove bags of sand, to put back the glass, etc.. Monsieur Marin asked for 1,570,000 francs. In all, for the last six months of 1919 he asked for 11,- 000,000 francs. At Rheims Cathedral twenty French work- 220 OUT OF THE RUINS men started clearing and sorting out the ruins shortly after the signing of the armistice. By the end of the summer of 1919 the whole cathe- dral will have been covered by a temporary wooden roof protected with tarred paper. As soon as that is finished, an invisible reinforced concrete roof wUl be built and the imsightly wooden roof removed. Then the destroyed pillars and buttresses will be rebuilt and the holes in the vaulting filled in. The plan is not to restore any of the sculp- ture or carving, but to leave it as it is, as a permanent witness to German barbarity. The glass and the tapestries will be brought back, and within two years services will again be held in this the most historic building of the war. In a number of places the question is coming up for discussion as to whether this or that monument shall be restored or not. With re- gard to the medieval castle of Coucy-le-Cha- teau, the architects feel that the whole hilltop should be left just as it is. The Belgian Gov- ernment has already decided to conserve the ruins of the Cloth Hall and the cathedral at Ypres as they are. A committee has already ORGANIZATION 221 been formed to erect a great memorial at Fort Douaumont, near Verdun, and to preserve the surrounding region just as it is. In general, however, the experts feel that there is no object in trying to preserve ruins as memorials, be- cause they will crumble and be buried under vegetation so soon. The Minister of Fine Arts has appointed a commission composed of the leading architects of France to decide on all questions affecting the restoration of the monu- ments historiques. In its various ministries the French Govern- ment has already developed a vast organization for aiding the reestablishment of the liberated regions; but however large this organization may eventually be, it is obvious that most of the results are going to come from private in- itiative and effort. The Government realizes this and is doing everything possible to en- courage it. CHAPTER IX PRIVATE OKGANIZATION AND EFFORT The number of associations, societies, com- mittees, and groups of various sorts that have sprung into being to help in one way or another in the reestabhshment of the liberated regions, is beyond all count. Many of them one hears about only by accident. But one and all they are bringing their contribution to the work. There are, however, a few outstanding groups that are particularly worthy of study, and fore- most among these are the cooperative societies. We have already described the one hundred and twenty cooperative societies of agriculture which were formed in the Somme, the Aisne, and the Oise, before the German advance in the spring of 1918. Since the Germans were driven back again few new ones have been formed, but instead many hundred agricul- tural syndicates have sprung up all the way from Belgium to Alsace. People are appreci- ating more and more the advantages of pur- 222 PRIVATE OHGANIZATIOK 223 chasing in common their implements, machin- ery, seed, fertilizer, animals, and forage. Following closely after the agricultural syn- dicates are the reconstruction cooperative societies. The Government is doing every- thing it can to encoxirage their formation and to give them special inducements in the way of labor, transportation, materials, and larger ad- vances. Already several hundred of them have been formed or are forming and there will be many more as soon as permanent recon- struction can get actively imder way. It is probable that many of the agricultural syndi- cates will gradually change over into recon- struction cooperative societies. Meanwhile, awaiting the time when these groups will have to devote all of their efforts to reconstruction, the idea is being strongly agi- tated that they should start consumers' cooper- ative stores. Before the war the liberated regions were full of cooperative stores; a few have already been started up again, usually as branches of a large cooperative store in some central city. Such stores can be of the great- est use at once, in controlling the speculative advance in prices. 224 OUT OF THE RUINS Another phase of cooperative activity was launched in the village of Villers-Carbonnel in the Somme. Here all the able-bodied inhab- itants of the town presented themselves as a group to the Service af Urgency Work of the Ministry of Liberated Regions, and offered their services cooperatively at the legal rates for clearing up the fieldsi and the ruins of their village. Still another kind of cooperative society is that formed by several groups of manufactur- ers, such as the textile cooperative society at Fourmies in the Nord, and that formed by the three sugar-manufacturers at Roye in the Somme, who decided to pool their interests and rebuild only one plant instead of three. The reconstruction cooperative societies are usually forpaed one to a village, but in the Meuse we found a cooperative society at St. Mihiel that includes thirty communes, and over five hundred members, and another at Vig- neuUes which is even larger. These latter, however, proved unwieldy and have been broken up into a number of smaller societies, each consisting of not over five villages. These societies all are profiting by the ex- PRIVATE ORGANIZATION 225 perience of the four pioneer societies that started rebuilding along the old battle line of the Marne over two and a half years ago. When I visited the villages there, in the end of March, 1919, I found them nearly com- pletely resurrected from their ruins. Large farm barns, well designed and well built, com- fortable, substantial houses, permanent out- buildings, all testified to a thoroughness and self-respect that augurs well for the future. I asked Monsieur Oiseau, the Mayor of Glannes, and the treasurer of the reconstruction cooper- ative society of the villages of Glannes, Huiron, and Courdemanges (all just west of Vitry-le- Fran9ois) if he thought that conservative French farmers really believed in the advan- tages of cooperation. He said that they did now, certainly, although at first it had required much persuasion to get them to join in. He said that in their cooperative society they had done about 400,000 francs' worth of work; all of the money except about 6,000 francs was ad- vanced by the State against the eventual war indemnities. Of this, 272,000 francs had been advanced in cash, and the rest in materials and transportation. They had had one archi- 226 OUT OF THE HUINS tect and one contractor for all of the thirty farm-buildings and five houses that they had already built. The Government had given them thirty German prisoners, carpenters and masons by trade, at 4 francs a day. The Gov- ernment has also given them priority on ma- terials and transportation, as well as a larger advance on their war indemnity than they could have had if they had applied singly. The result of this was that with the various inducements granted by the State to the coop- erative society they had found that without using any of their own private capital they were actually getting twice as much building done as they could have if they had undertaken it individually. The great question now is how to keep the newly formed cooperative societies interested and profitably at work until they can actually start rebuilding next spring. Many are using the combined force of the society to speed up their damage awards. Many are studying the improvement of their town in accordance with the new town-planning law. Others are help- ing in getting quicker results in clearing up the ruins. In the Pas-de-Calais we find sev- PRIVATE ORGANIZATION 227 eral cooperative societies already at work mak- ing bricks, against the future. In general they are laying in stocks of materials and tools. Everywhere there are activity and plenty of promise of results as soon as the conditions will permit. In addition to the cooperative societies and the syndicates, but often composed of the same members, are the numerous Societes de Tiers Mandataires which have been created by the Ministry of Liberated Regions throughout the rural districts to purchase and distribute agri- cultural supplies. A sitnilar group of local societies will soon be formed by the Govern- ment to purchase and distribute building-ma- terials; then, in addition, there is the purchas- ing board which is attached to the Ministry of Industrial Reconstitution. All of these groups consist of citizens organized by private initiative to help the Government. Each department has its refugee committees, all of which are grouped together in one union for the whole liberated regions. The chief in- terest has been in urgent relief work and in the publication of a newspaper for each depart- ment that would keep the refugees in touch 228 OUT OF THE RUINS with their friends and relatives and with what the Government was doing for them. In each department, also, there is an asso- ciation of war victims. These associations, again, are grouped together in what is known as the Federation des Associations Departe- mentales de Sinistres. This group had been particularly effective during the war in getting action on the war-damage bills. Now it is using its combined force to speed up the Gov- ernment work in the devastated regions. On June 20, 1919, a new federation of war victims was formed, called La Federation Franpaise des Sinistres. The chief object of this federation is to see that the war victims are actually paid their war damages by the State. A strong national committee has been hard at work since early in the war, helping in the preparation and enactment of the war-damage law. It is called Comite National d' Action pour la Reparation Integrale des Dommages causes par la Guerre. The chambers of commerce throughout the devastated regions have been most active, do- ing whatever they could themselves and induc- ing the Government to do the rest. The local PRIVATE ORGANIZATION 229 Syndicats d'Initiative have been most helpful along the same line. In the summer of 1916, the Association Gen- erale des Hygienistes et Techniciens Munici- paux, in collaboration with other technical so- cieties, organized a big exhibition in the garden of the Tuileries, in Paris, at which were shown a number of portable houses, types of quick construction, and samples of furniture and utensils, all adapted to the devastated regions. In the autumn of 1917 La Societe des Archi- tectes Diplomes organized a competition for better types of rural buildings, in harmony with the original architectural style of the North. The Government gave 30,000 francs in prizes and allowed two hundred and thirty picked mobilized men twenty days' leave from the trenches to work on this competition. The results were most interesting and valuable, especially as they drew the attention of the public to the desirability of preserving the lo- cal architectural character in the reconstruction of the devastated regions, rather than descend- ing to the horrible ginger-bread architecture affected in so many modern French suburbs. The Musee Social and the Ecole Superieure 230 OUT OF THE RUINS d'Art Public have kept up a constant study of better ways of doing things in the reestablish- ment of the liberated regions. The Musee Social has. pubhshed a number of excellent pamphlets on its conclusions. The Ecole Su- perieure d'Art Public has for several years offered to the public daily lectures by the best authorities in France on town-planning, hous- ing, sanitation, recreation, landscape architec- ture, public art, and all the things that make for the betterment of living and working con- ditions. ' The Reconstruction Research and Propa- ganda Service of the American Red Cross, which I organized in March, 1917, working in close collaboration with the leading French technical societies and authorities, determined during 1918 a number of standards of im- proved methods in construction, agriculture, town-planning, sanitation, etc., with particular application to the reconstitution problems of the liberated regions. During the autumn and winter of 1917 I made frequent trips to the Somme to foUow up the repair work the American Red Cross was doing there under the charge of Mr. Barbey and Mr. Barton. It PRIVATE ORGANIZATION 231 was a most valuable experiment, very helpful in our research work. In February, 1919, all of its studies and its library were turned over to La Renaissance des Cites, which has been continuing the work. La Renaissance des Cites was founded in the second year of the war, as a disinterested and unpaid advisory society, and is composed of leading architects, artists, engineers, sani- tarians, bankers, lawyers, humanitarians, and welfare workers. It has issued a nimiber of excellent reports on pertinent subjects. It has made plans for the improvement of Arras, Albert, Tracy-le-Val, Chauny, and Coucy-le- Chateau. It has a large hbrary on reconstitu- tion subjects and along the same hne it has organized several exhibitions and is conduct- ing an extensive campaign of education. The Rockefeller Tuberculosis Commission, in conjimction with the Tuberculosis Bureau and the Child Welfare Bureau of the Ameri- can Red Cross, has conducted a general health propaganda throughout France. It is now making an especial effort in the department of the Nord. At Amiens, the Government and private in- 232 OUT OF THE RUINS dividuals opened on July 13, 1919, an exhi- bition of furniture suitable for use in the Somme. It is expected that their idea will be adopted throughout the liberated regions. At the Foire de Paris, in May, 1919, and at the Jardin d'Acclimatation during August, 1919, there were extensive exhibitions of portable houses and other forms of quick construc- tion suitable to the devastated regions. All of these things have helped greatly in drawing the attention of the pubhc to the needs, and in exchanging ideas among technical people. In the spring of 1919, Le Comite National de I'Education Physique et Sportive et de I'Hygiene Sociale held a big inter-aUied con- gress to consider social hygiene in its applica- tion to the reconstruction of the devastated regions. Their action is largely responsible for the introduction of the excellent sanitation clauses in the recent war-damage law. The Association Generale des Hygienistes et Techniciens Municipaux and the Societe de Medecine Publique et du Genie Sanitaire, and various other medical and health associations, have by their meetings, publications, and per- PRIVATE ORGANIZATION 233 sonal effort added greatly to the general inter- est in public-health matters. The Societe des Architectes Diplomes par le Gouvernement and the Societe Centrale des Architectes, have taken an active part in se- curing better legislation affecting reconstruc- tion and have striven unceasingly for a high standard of architectural practice. Recently the former society has organized a cooperative society among its members, so that they can pool their effort and avoid dupHcation in their reconstruction work. The Federation des Architectes, which includes six other architec- tural societies, has also created a cooperative society among its members, with the same ob- ject in view. Recently a national federation of all the architectural societies has been formed, with the object of securing a complete coordination of effort and program. In the liberated departments a number of contracting groups have been formed, so that they can unite their efforts on a common pro- gram. At the same time the Federation Ra- tionale du Batiment et des Travaux Publics has organized the building-industry through- 234 OUT OF THE RUINS out the country and at its national con- ferences helped greatly in improving building- practice. Probably the most important step that has been taken toward solving the problem of re- construction, was the bringing together on No- vember 26, 27, and 28, 1918, of all the national societies technically interested ia reconstruc- tion. At this congress were the leading archi- tects, engineers, contractors, and material-sup- ply men of France. They presented a care- fully worked out program of action to the French Government, many parts of which have since been put into effect. Perhaps more im- portant still, they organized the Office du Bati- ment et des Travaux Publics composed of the presidents of the various national societies that took part in the congress. This committee has been meeting regularly every week since, to consider technical reconstruction matters, to improve building-methods and materials, and wherever possible to standardize them. With the support of the Minister of Liberated Re- gions it has sent a strong commission to Amer- ica to see what practical contribution the PRIVATE ORGANIZATION 235 United States can make in materials and methods. La Societe Fran9aise des Urbanistes, which is the French toMTi-planning institute, has brought together for common effort the leading town-planning speciaUsts of France. The Inter-allied Town-Planning Conference, which it held in Paris on June 11, 12, and 13, 1919, was of excellent educative value, and did much toward standardizing town-planning practice. Nine members of the organization have formed themselves into a town-planning cooperative society, called the Bureau Technique des Plans de ViUes, and having the same object in view as the architectural cooperative societies which we described above. Of particular interest in connection with town-planning is the creation of a French group, called the Societe Aerienne Fran9aise which takes photographs to scale from the air of anything that is to be mapped or planned. The use of aerial photographs is fairly revolu- tionizing town-planning methods of study. Another interesting group that has recently been formed is known as the Union Centrale 236 OUT OF THE RUINS des Victimes des dommages causes par la Guerre, which has been organized for the sup- port and defense of the rights of war victims. The society, which is semi-commercial in char- acter, provides technical advice to war victims along any line that may interest them in con- nection with the reestablishment of their prop- erties. In addition there are a number of industrial and commercial groups that are forming all through the liberated regions and in March, 1919, there was held a commercial congress of the liberated regions which was organized by the Federation des Syndicates Commerciaux du Departement du Nord. It asked the Gov- ernment to grant it the necessary facilities for feeding the returning refugees and otherwise supplying their wants, so that it could replace the relief societies still at work. The various national agricultural societies, such as the Societe des Agriculteurs de France, the Academic d' Agriculture, the Institut Na- tional Agronomique, and the Societe Nationale pour I'Encouragement a 1' Agriculture, have been taking an effective part in the encourage- ment of farming in the devastated regions. PRIVATE ORGANIZATION 237 The first-named society in particular has dis- tributed a quantity of farm implements in the liberated regions. The Inter-allied Congress of World Agriculture, held by the United States Army Educational Commission at the United States Army University at Beaune, on June 7, 8, 9, and 10, 1919, was of the greatest service in drawing attention to the problems in the devastated regions and in helping to stand- ardize farming-methods. The labor unions were very strong in the North before the war. In the department of the Nord, for example, there were 299 labor unions and 164 farmers' unions; in the Mame there were 62 labor unions and 258 farmers' unions; in the Meurthe-et-Moselle there were 38 labor unions, and 165 farmers' unions. These groups are getting back on their feet as rapidly as they can and are bound to be a big factor in the reestablishment of economic life. In the final analysis it is the effort of the individual that is going to count most in the resurrection of the destroyed country. The basis of all is the farmer. We have seen on every hand how determinedly he has set him- self to the task. Every member of the family 238 OUT OF THE RUINS works, from the youngest child to the old grandfather or grandmother. As soon as it is light enough to work, these people are out in the fields, and they keep continuously at it until after dark; seven days a week they work and they take no time off except to go to the market or the country fair. Little shops are springing up throughout the devastated re- gions, where farming-machinery or implements can be repaired. Seeds, fertihzer, and farm animals are more and more available. We can rest assured that if the Government continues to do its best in providing the necessary facili- ties, agriculture will be back on pre-war basis in a surprisingly short time. The same thing is true of industry and of conmierce. The private initiative is there, the will to work is there. In every town there are plenty of people who are ready to carry on the stores if only they can be assured that their goods will arrive. There are plenty of manu- facturers that are ready to start up th'eir plants, if only they can covmt on a regular delivery of their raw materials and of sufficient housing for their employees. private: organization 239 It finally comes down in large measure to a problem of building, and there again we find plenty of will to work, the only difficulty being the limitations of technical experience. The town baker at La Bassee, who was the first man to return, found his home and his bakery flat on the ground, but he set to work and cleared away a space, and although he was no builder, he set up such posts as he could salvage where he wanted the comers of his building, and others around his doors and windows, and then fiUed in the spaces between with any bro- ken pieces of brick he could find in the ruins, laying them in mud mortar. He put some boards and some corrugated iron across the top of this structure, and had to all intents and purposes a house. He even became so am- bitious as to build a chimney and fireplace of brick-bats and mud. It was in the little farm-village of Esmery- Hallon that I found the village mason building a most successful emergency house in the gar- den behind his former home, using the same sort of materials that the baker was using at La Bassee. The walls were plumb and true and 240 OUT OF THE RUINS the house really had a good deal of charm. He did the work unaided and in a surprisingly short time. Less successful but much more picturesque was a little house on the edge of the same town which was thrown together by a gardener who knew nothing whatsoever about building. It was a patchwork of every sort of material imaginable, pulled out of the ruins — such a mixture that it at first seemed a very success- ful bit of camouflage. However, the house satisfied all of the builder's needs, even through the sleety winter weather, and was really very comfortable inside. These people are finding a way out and with the least encouragement will be able to settle down for good in their former homes. CHAPTER X RESULTS AND NEEDS Facts and figures really signify little. In order to appreciate what devastation means you must see it yourself with your own eyes. And what is more you must see it again and again; otherwise it does not sink in. If you would appreciate the enormous task that France has before her, if you would appre- ciate the courage and the splendid spirit with which she has attacked it, if you would appre- ciate what she has actually done toward the re- establishment of the devastated regions, you must go through them and note the prog- ress she has made from month to month; for things are being done and the regions are com- ing back. When I was in Noyon in the sunmier of 1917, after the Germans had been driven out, the toAvn and its cathedral were almost intact. I passed through again after dark on New Year's Day, 1919: the place was a mass of ghostly ruins ; no light anywhere, nobody in the 241 242 OUT OP' THE RtJINS street except an occasional poilu — a city of the dead. I returned once more on Easter Day: the resurrection had taken place; hundreds of courageous men, women, and children had come back and were living somehow in the ruins of their homes. Easter service was held in the ruins gf the cathedral chapel under a cover of rusty corrugated iron, A number of stores were open and doing a lively business and everywhere one could buy post-cards and souvenirs of the ruins. To-day several thou- sand parsons are back, a nimiber of barracks and portable houses have been erected, and people are actively at work clearing away the ruins and beginning to rebuild. In many ways Lens is the most impressive sight in the devastated regions. This mining city had over 32,000 habitants before the war, but when I was there in February only about a hundred people had managed to return and find a miserable shelter for themselves in their wrecked homes. To-day, however — ^that is, in July, 1919 — over 2,500 persons are back; a niraiber of barracks have been erected, and a good start has been made toward the clearing away of the ruins, RESULTS AND NEEDS 243 When I first went back to Rheims, last win- ter, nearly 2,000 persons had ventured to re- turn, the city water-supply had been put back into operation, but there was no sewage-dis- posal, no lights, not even a restaurant ; to-day there are nearly 40,000 people there; stores, souvenir shops, and restaurants abound on every hand, and the pastry is as good as that one gets in Paris. To be sure, the inhabitants have only just begun to clear away the ruins, but every house that is at all reparable is be- ing made habitable, 800 barracks have been put up, and Rheims is very actively concerned with its new plans for making the future city more practical, more sanitary, and more beautiful than the city of the past. When we come to the little village of Vitri- mont and others of the resurrected villages along the old battle line of the Marne, we can see the devastated regions as they will be ten, fifteen, twenty years from now — in many cases more noble, more beautiful for having been purged by fire. The saddest towns are those that will never come back. Douaimfont, Fleury, Vaux, and eight other communes that stood the brunt of 244 OUT OF THE RUINS the attack on Verdun are now merely memo- ries, for on April, 1919, the mayors of these towns wrote to their fellow-townsmen that they must never return. The ruins of the towns are full of dangers and the fields can never be recultivated. There may be a hundred or more of these tragic villages that never can be rebuilt. There are 250,000 acres of good farming- land that is so badly churned up by shell fire and so cut up with trenches that the experts say to bring it back into use will cost more than it is worth. The State is talking of expropri- ating this land, with the villages that are irre- claimable, but the owners object; they cannot be persuaded that the earth is sterile. They believe it will work itself back into shape in a comparatively short time, especially if they help the process along by bringing in top-soil themselves. They say, too, that if the State is going to reforest these tracts, there is no reason why they should not do so themselves. The problem will work itself out in time and the regions will come back. Agriculture in general is coming back and From the center of the city of thirty-flve tljousand people before the "war. DESEKTED MEDIEVAL TOWN OF CONCY-LE-CHATEAU, AISNE H g RESULTS AND NEEDS 245 coming back rapidly. You can see batteries of tractors at work almost anywhere from Bel- gium to Alsace. Each day sees several hun- dred acres more brought back under cultiva- tion. Seed, fertilizer, implements, and farm animals are arriving daily in rapidly increasing quantities. Industry is coming back. Each day the of- ficial bulletins of the government list anywhere from five to twenty damaged industrial plants that have again opened their doors and are ask- ing for employees. The number of people in Lille, Amiens, and Rheims who have been out of work is decreasing. We find a marked tendency among the peo- ple to crowd into the industrial centers at the expense of the country districts. Fortunately, this is balanced by the rapidly increasing use of agricultiu*al machinery, which means that the same acreage can be cultivated by a little over half the number of men needed by the old- fashioned method. This means, in turn, that some of the destroyed agricultural villages will never need to be rebuilt and that most of the others will have smaller populations than be- 246 OUT OF THE RUINS fore the war. All of this is most fortunate, because it makes the stupendous problem of reconstruction a little easier to solve. On the other hand, the problem of industrial housing becomes more menacing. There is need to-day of several hundred thousand new houses for industrial workers. The problem is fully as acute in France as it is in the United States, and almost as acute as it is in England, but these other two countries are concen- trating on industrial housing, while France wiU be able to pay very little attention to it until she has taken care of her reconstruction. It is hard for the soldier who has given everything for his country to have to come back to hve in worse slums than he left. He deserves a far better lot. But all of the labor, material, and transportation that France has available wUl be monopolized by the devastated regions for many years to come. With regard to labor, it is a great question where it is coming from. There were between 500,000 and 600,000 building-trades workmen in France before the war, of which at least 100,000 were killed or are unable to resume their trade. At least 100,000 to 200,000 more RESULTS AND NEEDS 247 will be needed just for repair and renewal work throughout the rest of France. This leaves only 200,000 or 300,000 men available in the devastated regions. At a safe estimate it will take these men nearly twenty years to re- construct the essential buildings that have been destroyed. There is no labor available in England, there is none in America, there is none in Belgiimi, and the French do not wish to call in German workmen if there is any other way possible. All that is left are the few thousands of skilled workmen available in Spain and in Italy and such unskilled work- men as can be brought from the French colo- nies and from China. The French architects, engineers, and builders realize that their salva- tion lies in adopting labor-saving methods and machinery wherever it can possibly be done. That is why they have sent an expert commis- sion to America to see what the United States can contribute in ideas or machinery, and why they have organized strong committees to standardize building-material and construction. Most of the material needed in the construc- tion France can produce herself. But in or- der to begin producing it in large quantities 248 OUT OF THE RUINS she needs certain machinery and tools that can be had quickly only from abroad. Further- more, she needs certain raw materials quicker and in greater quantities than she can supply them from within her own borders. In par- ticular she needs wood and cement, and, to a lesser extent, glass and iron. She will need much coal for making brick, cement, lime, and steel, and much gasolene to supply transporta- tion motive power. In industry she needs certain raw materials, such as cotton, wool, leather, and various chem- icals. In agriculture she needs a number of agri- cultural machines and implements in addition to those she can manufacture herself or get back from Germany. A hst of these was given in the chapter on Devastation. Furthermore, she will need fully 200,000 horses; 700,000 cows; 800,000 sheep; 300,000 pigs; all of which will probably have to be supphed from outside. Of the 212,000 tons of fertihzer needed, the potash beds in Alsace will supply a consider- able part, but probably 100,000 tons will have to come from abroad. The material that is coming from the hquida- RESULTS AND NEEDS 249 tion of the French, British, and American Army stores is helping wonderfully; but there are many specific things needed imme- diately, that are not to be fovmd in the sal- vage stock. This is why the decree of July 8, 1919, which admits almost all raw and manufactured mate- rials without restriction except for the in- creased duties, is bound to prove of inestima- ble value. The door is now opened, and Americans, British, and other foreigners can take a more practical interest in the reconstruc- tion problems of France. The American and the French merchants need each other. They want to do business together. They should do far more than they have done in the past; but unfortunately there are many little misunderstandings that have seriously retarded the growth of exportation and importation between the two countries. When I visited France in 1916, on the Ameri- can Industrial Commission, the French manu- facttu-ers and chambers of commerce told us frankly that there were several difficulties that would have to be overcome before the French would place orders heavily in America. The 250 OUT OF THE RUINS first question was one of credit, because most American exporters demand half down when the order is placed and the balance when the goods leave America; this not only ties up French capital for an unnecessarily long time, but the consignee has no redress in case the goods when they arrive are not according to the specifications. Furthermore, a number of French manufacturers are complaining to-day that they paid half down in America months ago on the promise of immediate dehvery, but that the American manufacturer presents one excuse after another for not delivering; the result is that the French capital is tied up so that the Frenchman cannot transfer his orders to England or elsewhere; meanwhile his plant and his workmen lie idle. Another cause of trouble lies in the fact that the American ex- porters are in many cases behind those of other nations in trying to make their goods conform to French standards and tastes, and often send them packed in such a way that they do not stand the ocean voyage. In addition to the American Industrial Commission which came over to study the French situation in 1916, there was the Engi- RESULTS AND NEEDS 251 neering Commission which came over in 1918, and an Educational Commission which came over in the spring of 1919. The United States Government and the large banking, ex- porting, and contracting interests have sent over any number of committees and experts to study these problems. The American Cham- ber of Commerce in France has been indefatig- able in trying to solve them. The Franco- American Mission, of which Monsieur Tardieu is the head, has been most active in promoting pubhc and private negotiations between the two countries. The Society called France- Amerique, and other Franco- American groups, have been very successful in creating a better understanding in each country of the needs and problems of the other. There has been organized in the United States an exchange-press service between America and France, America and Belgium, with Italy, and with England, to publish gen- erally in each of the countries worth-while articles on economic, social, and political situa- tions in the others. There has also been organized in each of the four European coun- tries just mentioned, a commission composed 252 OUT OF THE RUINS of leading business men, manufacturers, and bankers, which is going to the United States in September, 1919, as the guest of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, in the inter- est of creating better vmderstanding between the countries. Meanwhile American exporters, bankers, contractors, and promoters, have been coming to France in rapidly increasing numbers ; vari- ous American financial groups stand ready to make large loans in France ; the American ex- porters in their understanding with the bank- ers are already making much easier credit con- ditions to the French; American contractors, associating with French contractors, are al- ready getting started on reconstruction con- tracts. The possibihties of collaboration and of good business between the two countries are increasing daily. Another problem of great importance to France in a business way is that of the tourists and their hotels, for without any question, for many years to come, the country will be over- run with tourists from every corner of the globe and especially from America. The tour- ing-Club de France, the Automobile Club de VITRIMONT, MEUBTHE-ET-MOSBLLE Rebuilt l)y the Galifornia Committee. THE CARPENTER SHOP OP THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE FOR DEVASTATED FRANCE, AT BLERANCOURT, AISNE '-"^' y E.ac. hm.t of iK.Gc,-.nA .Jvan« 1-'' • ■ i> Zone -here only rtnujyol o) (>ro(Mtil»l li n-^osiary D t UO lUK ^^a Zone including Irenctwi ana shell holu lobe tilled. ^^ Zon*.htrcc»tofbftiv8ln8b«k,eif«wbvBlu«o(lan4 <'\2l' " -V*'^^ ' -V LUXE-MDOUf^G ^ — ~. ^y-X f "^^ AUBE \ i f A RECLAMATION OP LAND IN THE DEVASTATED REGION OP PRANCE HEStJLTS AND NEEDS ^53 France, the National Hotel Syndicate, all real- ize this keenly and have been preparing for it for some time. The Hotel Committee of the Touring Club published a report in 1917, em- bodying a complete hotel program for France, showing on a map just where hotels were needed and the character and size of each; in all it estimated that France should construct immediately 600,000,000 francs' worth of new hotels. A number of these projects are al- ready being realized, often with the help of foreign capital, but as soon as the government "Credit Hoteher" is voted work will be ac- tively undertaken. In 1917 the French Government was pre- vailed upon to create a Government Tourist Office to promote this great national industry. The result was the creation of the Office Na- tional de Tourisme, under the direction of Monsieur Famechon, and attached to the Min- istry of Commerce. On February 17, 1919, there was a congress in Paris of the four hun- dred Syndicats d'lnitiative, or boosting socie- ties, of France. They are cooperating heartily in the movement to prepare for tourists. Recently it has become apparent that the 254 OUT OF THE HUINS new hotels can never be built in time to meet the demands, so these societies are concentrat- ing on an effort to induce the thousands of httle hotels and inns to do immediately the things necessary to make them meet the mini- mum specifications of the Touring Club for an acceptable hotel. Ever since April, 1919, commercial tours to the devastated regions have been in prog- ress. The two railroad companies in the devastated regions have each organized several which they call "pilgrimages." Automobile totu-ing is limited only by the cost of gasolene and the price of tires. Several thousand peo- ple come to Rheims every day to see the ruins and the battle-fields near by. Most of these tourists are only a few hours in the devastated regions at a time and spend httle or no money there. This is giving rise to much unpleasant feeling on the part of the natives, who quite justifiably demand that the tourists should con- tribute to the reestablishment of the commimi- ties by a sojourn tax at least. This problem is bound to become increasingly acute as time goes on. So far we have been discussing only the busi- HESXTLTS AND NEEDS 25S ness problems of reconstruction. There is an- other side that proves far more interesting to many people, and that is the philanthropic side. Ever since the beginning of the war we have been hearing about the adoption of towns; a great deal of sentiment has grown up in Eu- jrope and the United States in favor of helping the destroyed villages come back to life. The first real adoption to come to any practi- cal result was in Vitriinont, in the Meurthe-et- Moselle. There virtually the entire village has been rebuilt by an American committee, and it is the only village that has been completely rebuilt in the whole of the devastated region. In the simimer of 1917, several villages in the Somme and the Oise were tentatively adopted by Americans who expected to rebuild them; but the German advance in the spring of 1918 stopped these plans. Since the signing of the armistice, one after another, we have heard of the adoption of this town or that. Bordeaux has adopted Albert and has already sent it 150,000 francs; Cler- mont-en-Argonne has been adopted by Cler- mont-Ferrand; Roye, by Rambouillet ; Pont-a- Mousson, by Metz; Herpy, by Aries; Chauny 256 OUT OF THE RUINS et La Bassee, by Chartres; Arras, by Mar- seilles (already over a million francs have been sent to Arras) ; Vouziers has been adopted by Rennes; St. Laurent-Blangy, by Versailles; Suippes, by St. Nazaire; Sampigny, by Mul- house; Laon and St. Quentin, by Lyon; Pet- tancourt in the Lorraine by the Eleventh Ward of Paris, and a nameless village by Barcelona. There have been many unofficial nmiors about Americans having adopted this or that town, but up to July, 1919, the only apphca- tions that have been officially recognized by the French Government were the adoption of Hattonchatel in the Meuse by Miss Skinner of Holyoke, Mass. ; Coucy-le-Chateau by Mrs. Whitney Warren of New York ; Landres and St. Georges near Romagne by "The Delinea- tor" ; and Rheims in part by the City of Chi- cago; also, the American Fvmd for French Wounded is giving a three-hundred-thousand- dollar hospital to Rheims; and the Roman Catholics of New York city are raising money to rebuild destroyed churches in France. To gain a concrete idea of what adoption may mean, the letter written on June 17, 1919, by the Mayor of the City of Rheims to Ex- RESULTS AND NEEDS 257 Mayor Dunne of Chicago, is most interesting. In this letter the following four specific things are named as the items for which the help of Chicago would be most appreciated: (1) The creation of garden suburbs, with at least 100 model dweUings for working-men, with plenty of parks and gardens. Such a garden suburb would cost about 2,000,000 francs, exclusive of the pubhc baths which it would be most desirable to have with each suburb. The new city plans call for four such suburbs. (2) Almost all of the hospitals of Rheims were destroyed.:, The American Fund for French Wounded is building a splendid hospi- tal for children, but it is most desirable that a large general hospital should be built to take care of the other needs of the town. Such a hospital would cost from 6,000,000 to 10,000,- 000 francs. (3) The Public Library, which was in- stalled in a comer of the old town hall, was completely destroyed; but fortunately all the magnificent collections, manuscripts, engrav- ings, etc. — ^some 40,000 items — were saved. 258 OUT OF THE RUINS and would form the nucleus of a new library built on the old site. It would cost about 2,- 000,000 francs to build the library and about 2,000,000 francs more to replace its destroyed books. (4) There is great need of a Scientific In- stitute in the School of Medicine, in which there would be laboratories for the study of bacteriology, chemistry, botany, physiology, and viticulture. At Hattonchatel, Miss Skinner started her "adoption" by providing for the repair of the water-supply system installed by the Germans during their occupation. She is assuming the extra cost of removing the manure piles from before the houses and installing them hygieni- cally in the rear instead. The question arises so often about the mean- ing of the word "adoption," that I asked Mon- sieur Mauclere, the Commissioner-General in the Ministry of Liberated Regions, if he would give me an official definition of it. On June 2, 1919, he wrote me that the French Govern- ment and the French people were most appre- ciative of the good wishes of their American RESULTS AND NEEDS 259 friends and most grateful for what Americans were doing for the unfortunate people in the devastated regions. He called my attention to the fact that the war-damage law provided for the payment in full of all losses sustained, which meant that if a benefactor reconstructed private buildings at his own expense, either the proprietor of the house would be paid twice over, or the benefactor would be making his gift to the French Government. For that reason he felt that gifts should be used solely for improvements which would not be paid for by the State. Furthermore, he felt that these improvements ought to be to the advantage of a group of people or the town as a whole, rather than for the benefit of any one individ- ual. For example, he thought that giving a public shower-bath would be much more use- ful than giving separate baths to a nimiber of individuals ; giving a public water-supply or a sewer system much more desirable than pro- viding individual wells or improving individual privies or water-closets. He felt that the time for giving or even selhng relief supplies had nearly passed, because if continued much longer it would prevent normal business from 260 OUT OF THE RUINS reestablishing itself, and would lead only to pauperization. He felt that gifts could be made to better advantage for the collective im- provement of physical and moral life. He said: "All the pecuniary and material resources and all of the collaboration of your admirably trained public-health nurses and welfare work- ers that you can put at the disposition of the groups that are trying to found commimity centers in the devastated regions will be most keenly appreciated by us." He went on to say: "In this public-health and community- center work we are at the very beginning, while you have already had a long experience. We have plenty of good-will, but to put it into ef- fective use we shall for some time need your instruction and guidance." Monsieur Mauclere was convinced that the creation of a health and commimity center, en- dowed for a period until it could get thor- oughly on its feet, was the greatest contribu- tion that Americans could make. I have talked with a nxmiber of the French leaders about this, and they seem to be pretty generally of the opinion that something of this RESULTS AND NEEDS 261 sort that will improve the physical and moral well-being of the returning refugees is the thing that is most worth while. With the pas- sage of the eight-hour law in France most peo- ple have gained an hour or two of leisure. The problem is how to use this extra time to best advantage. There has been great physical and moral strain during the war and people need a chance to relax and recuperate. The returning soldier, as Monsieur Lebrun, Minis- ter of Liberated Regions, so wisely remarked, deserves the best his country can give him — a real home in healthy, Comfortable, charming surroundings, a better place than the saloon for his physical and mental recreation, and a happy environment for his family. The Young Women's Christian Association has been doing some wonderful work of this sort for the young women in the factory towns of France. The 1,500 foyers des soldats, which the Yoimg Men's Christian Association had so much to do with organizing and running, have proved to be of inestimable value. Now thirty foyers des soldats in the devastated regions are being changed into foyers civils for the returning refugees and the workmen. The 262 OUT OF THE RUINS Ligue Civique is creating foyers dviques; an- other group is creating maisons de tous; an- other group has already started several rural community centers, called foyers de cam- pagnes. The idea of these is the same in each case. One part of the group is to be used as a health center, with a dispensary, shower-baths, and disinfection plant; a second part is to consist of one or more meeting-rooms, which can be used by reconstruction cooperative societies, agricul- tural syndicates, a children's club, a mothers' club, or any other commimity group ; and the third part would be used just hke our Ameri- can community centers, as a general meeting- place, with a hbrary, newspapers, and maga- zines, games, motion-picture shows, dances, theatricals, often with a temperance canteen at- tached. Already a number of these are being organized by the various groups. The idea is taking hold and is bound to spread rapidly. Now that peace is signed the heads of the French Government are devoting themselves actively to the liberated regions. Monsieur Clemenceau, returning from a trip in the dev- astated towns, has promised that the Govern- RESULTS AND NEEDS 268 ment will speed up its machinery in those regions; in particular he insists that 200,000 refugees that are now living in most temporary shelters must be and are going to be decently housed before next winter. Every effort is now being directed toward this end. France has suffered four and a half years of cruel war on her own territory ; a large part of het best source of revenue has been cut oflf; her coal and iron and textiles have been taken from her; millions of British and American troops have been quartered all over her land, and in addition several million refugees have been billeted throughout the country ; a million and a half of her best men have been killed, and another milhon maimed; through four and a half years she has kept up the pace and carried through. If ever a nation has earned the right to a helping hand, it is France. Yet in her pride and her self-respect she is meeting her new problems of reconstruction with an energy and a vision that the most callous must admire. It is a privilege to be allowed to collaborate with such a people. THE END INDEX Acad6mie d'Agric.ulture, 936 Administfative Service, The, 159 et siq. Adoption, meaning of, of a town, 256 et seq. Agricultural cooperative soci- eties, 171 Agricultural Service, The: 159 et aeq., 168; reconstruction work of, 169 et seq. Agriculture: pre-war state of, In Belgium and France, 3, 4, 34 et teq.; cost to reestab- lish, in war zone, 36, 37; re- establishment of, in devas- tated region, 236; return of, to war zone, S44, 245; needs of France in relation to, 348 Aide Immediate, L', 98 Alsne, 11, 27, 54, 95, 171, 303, 233 Aisne D6vast6e, L', 96 Albert: 39, 80, 195; plan for rebuilding, 197; adoption of, by Bordeaux, 255 Allies, extent of area won back from Germany by the, 30 Alsace: agricultural syndi- cates in, 323 et seq.; agri- cultural activities in, 346, S48 Alsace-Lorraine, description of, 57 America: relief work of, in 265 war zone, 103, 334; recon- struction commission sent to, by France, 308 ; commer- cial cooperation of France and, 249, 250 American Chamber of Com- merce in France, 251 American Committee for Dev- astated France, 101, 109 et seq. American Friends' Mission, 105 et seq. American Fund for French Wounded: 97; relief work of, 102, 110, 111, 256 American Industrial Commis- sion, 349, 351 American Red Cross: care of refugees by, 17 et seq., 96, 98, 105, 111 et seq., 118-120; reconstruction work of, 303, 207, 230 et seq. American Women's Hospitals, 110 American Relief Clearing House, 96, 118 Americans at Vaux, 26 Amiens: 6, 7, 55, 200, 218; furniture exhibition in, 231, 333; present industrial con- ditions in, 345 Anglo-American Friends' Mis- sibn, 105 et seq. Appilly, 99 Ardennes: 56; building prod- ucts in, 203 266 INDEX Aries, 2*5 Armentiferes, plans for re- building, 197 Anny Engineering Corps, 17fi, 178 Arras, 6, 7, 29, 6S, 195, 180; plans for rebuilding, 197, 219, 231, 256 Art, in Northern France and Belgium before the war, 5, 6 Assistance aux Depdts d'Ec- loppds, 98 Association Centrale pour la Reprise de 1' Activity Indus- trielle dans les Regions En- vahies, L', 209, 310 Association G^n^rale des Hy- gi^nistes et Techniclens Mu- nicipaux, 232, 233 Atrocities, German, 9 et teq. Automobile Club de Prance, 261, 252 BabcEuf, 99 Bailly, 99 Bapaume, 27 Barbey, Mr., 230 Barcelona, 256 Bar-le-Duc, 198 Barton, Mr., 230 Beauvais, 6, 11, 218 Belfort: 29; plans for rebuild- ing, 197 Belgian Relief Commission, 103 Belgium: pre-war prosperity of, 3 et »eq.; exodus of pop- ulation from, 7 et seq.; loot of, by Germans, 10; devasta- tion of, 19 et aeq.; extent of devastated area in, 29, 23, 58 et seq.; war-damage bill of, 59; assassination of non- combatants in, 61; differ- ence between war-damage law of, and that of France, 140; building-supplies in, 203; attitude of, toward conservation of war ruins, 230; agricultural syndicates in, 222 et seq.; post-war agricultural activities in, 245 B^thune, 29, 99, 180 Bl^rancourt, 98, 109, 110 Bluzet, Monsieur, 156, 167 Bordeaux: removal of French Government to, 7, 166, 265 Bourges, 11 Breweries, damage to, in war zone, 48, 49 Bridges, damage done to, in war zone, 61 Briey, 41 Brincard, Madame, 99 British Army, agricultural ac- tivities of, in war zone, 168 British House of Commons, effect of French town-plan- ning law on, 145 British Red Cross, 98 British Society of Friends: relief work of, 96, 96, 98, 101, 103 et seq. "Bulletin des Regions Libe- rtes," 166 Bureau of Bridges and High- ways, 216 Bureau of Hygiene, 146 Bureau of Reconstruction, 160 Bureau of Roads and High- ways, 193 Bureau of Rural Engineering, 89 Bureau Technique des Plans de Villes, 235 Caisnes, 100 Cambrai, 56, 219 INDEX 267 Canadian Red Cross, relief work of, 96 Canals: loss on, in war zone, 39; damage to, 51 Cantonal commissions, organ- ization of, 167 Cattle, loss of, in devastated region, 38 Caumont, 99 Central Industrial Committee, 59 Chabannes - la - Pallice, Ma- dame, 99 Chdlons-sur-Mame, 7, 219 Chamber of Deputies: action of, on payment of war dam- ages, 124-143, 157 Chambers of Commerce: work of the, in devastated region, 338, 329; French, 249 Charles, Lieutenant-Colonel, 162 Chartres, 218, 356 Chateau-Thierry: 7; advance of Germans on, 8, 29, 75, 101, 109, 179; use of adobe in rebuilding of, 207 Chauny: 21, 22; destruction of, 25 ; 77 ; architectural con- test for rebuilding, 196, 197, 231, 355 Ch6ry-0urscamps, 99 Cl^menceau, Monsieur, cited on plans for housing refu- gees, 263, 263 Clermont-en-Argonne, 55, 195 Clermont-Ferrand, 255 Cloth Hall, attitude of Bel- gian Government toward ruins of, 230 Chemical industries, extent of ruin to, in War zone, 43 Chicago, 357; partial adoption of Rheims by, 356 Chifflot, Monsieur, 163 Child "Welfare Bureau of the American Red Cross, 231 Children, German crimes against, 10 Chocarne, Monsieur, 163, et teq. Coal: pre-war production of, in devastated zone, 4; loss, 39, 40, 248 Comity Central Amfiricaln, 98 Comity de I'Aisne, 97 Comit6 de Compifegne, 97 Comity des Conmiunes Lib^ r^es de I'Oise, 97 Comity du Secours National, 97 Comity National d'Action pour la Reparation Int6- grale des Dommages Causes par le Fait de la Guerre: work of the, 134 et aeq., 338 Comit6 National de I'Educa^ tlon Physique et Sportive, 333 Coramenchon, 99 Compi^gne: 7, 39; plans for rebuilding, 197 Comptoir Central d'Achats Industriels pour les Regions Envahies, 210 Connecticut, 31 Conseil d'Etat, 136 Cooperative reconstruction so- cieties, 233-240 Coss6-Brissac, Madame de, 97 Coucy-le-Chateau: 6, 21, 33, 54; plans for rebuilding, 197; ruins of, 330, 331, 256 Courdemanges, 235 "Credit Hotelier," 263 Crocker, Mrs., reconstruction work of, 199 Crops, value of, lost in war zone, 38 Cuts, 100 268 INDEX D'Eiehtal, Monsieur, 99 Delaware, 30, 31, 36 "Delineator, The," 366 Deneux, Monsieur, part played by, ia saving art-objects in Rheims Cathedral, 217, 218 Departmental Town-Planning Commission, duties of the, 194 Department of Public Works In Paris, 134 D'Escayne, Madame, 99 Despagnat, Monsieur, 163 Degplas Bill, The, 124 et seq. Devine, Dr. Edward T., 17 D'Evry, Madame, 99 Dijon, 11 Dike, Mrs. 97 Distilleries, damage to, in war aone, 48, 49 Dixmude, B9 Dormans, 29 Douaumont, 221, 243 Dubois, Monsieur Louis, 31, 32 Dunkerque, 29 Dunne, Mayor, of Chicago, 267 Duryea, Mrs,, 98 Ecole Sup6rieure d'Art Pub- lic, reconstruction work of the, 230 Educational Commission, 251 Electrical industry, cost to re- establish the, in war zone, 42, 43 Employment bureau, French Government, for demobil- iaed men, 93 Engineering Commission, 261, 269 Epernay, 29 Bsmery-Hallon, 239, 240 Est Railroad: damage to, 60; reconstruction of, 216 Evian-les-Bains, 12 Expropriation law of 1918, 147 et aeq. Famechon, Monsieur, 253 Farmers, attitude of, toward cooperative agricultural re- Construction, 256, 256 Fanners' unions, pre-war strength of, in French war zone, 237 Farms : 6 ; condition of, in war zone, 37; cost to reestablish, 170; dead, of France, 244 Faure, Madame Jacques, 99 F^d^ration des Architectes, reconstruction work of the, 233 F6d^ration Fran^aise des Sinistr^s: 126; object of the, 228 F&i6ration Nationale du Bdtl- ment et des Travaux Pub- lics, recent work of the, 233, 234 F6d6ration des Sjmdicats Commerciaux du D^parte- ment du Nord, 236 Fish-preserving, loss on, in war zone, 38 Fleury, fate of, 243, 244 Flour-mills, damage to, in war lone, 49 Fodder, Government provi- sions for, for farm animals, 171 Foire de Paris, exhibition of portable houses at the, 232 Folks, Homer, 17 "Foreigners," 14 Forest: condition of, land in devastated region, 35, 36; cost to restore, land in war zone, 39 Forestry Service, reconstruc- tion work of the, 174 et teq. INDEX 269 Foundries, loss to France and Belgium in, 43 Fourmles, 213; textile coBper- ative societies in, 2S4 Foyers, 261, 262 France: pre-war prosperity of devastated area in, 3 et seq.; retreat of population from Northern, 1 ,et seq.; loot of, by Germans, 10; devastation of Northern, 19 et seq.; ex- tent of ruined area in, 32, 23, 31; bill for war dam- ages to, itemized, 38-53; congestion in Northern, caused by return of refu- gees, 64, 65; attitude of, to- ward private relief societies, 87; provision of Govern- ment of, for maimed sol- diers, 93, 94; Government of, pays all war damages, 124-143; difference between war-damage law of Belgium and that of, 139; effect of war on social legislation in, 144 et seq.; organization by Government of, for recon- struction, 155-221 ; recon- struction task of, 241 et seq.; housing problem in, 246; right of, to a helping hand, 263 France-Am^rique, 251 Franco-American Mission, 251 French Army, agricultural ac- tivities of the, 168 French Army Headquarters Sanitary Service, 90 French Red Cross, 95 French Wounded Emergency Fund, 98 Geoffray, Madame, 100 Gerb^vUlier, 26, 197 Germans: invasion of Belgium and Northern France by, 6 et seq.; advance of, on Ch4- teau-Thierry, 8 ; release of French prisoners by, 11, 13; 1918 drive of, IS; Rheims Cathedral and the, 19, 20; second onslaught of, 20, 21 ; turning back of, at the Marne, 36; activity of bombing-planes of, 29; total area of France invaded by, 31; looting by, 33, 34; rela- tion of, to mines in war zone, 41; extent of theft of ore by, 42 ; damage done by, to public works, 50 et seq.; damage to Belgium by, 58 et seq,; assassination of non-combatants by, 61; de- struction wrought by, in allies' territory, 61, 62; re- treat of, 64; at the Battle of the Somme, 64, 68, 69, 74, 75, 76, 105, 109, 123, 155; destruction to water-supply by, 164 ; effect of retreat of, on wheat crop, 168, 172; work of (prisoners), toward French reconstruction, 175, 177, 180, 195; ruthlessness of, 197, 214; repairing of Nord Railroad destroyed by, 215, 316; bombardment of Rheims Cathedral by, 217, 218, 220, 333; at Noyon, 241 et seq.; extent of dam- age done by, to industries in war zone, 250 et seq.; at Hatton-Chatel, 258 Girard, Lieutenant-Colonel, 163 Glass industry, damage to, in war zone, 43 ^yo , INDEX Grain-mills, injury to, by Germans, 49 Grdcourt, 20, 98, 111 Gulscard, 68 Ham, 6, 20, 27, SS, 68, 77, 98, 101, 180 Hanotaux, Monsieur Gabriel, 97 Hatton-Chatel, 256, 258 Hazebrouck, 29 Herpy, 255 Highways: damage to, in war zone, 51; reconstruction of, 216 Holman-BIack, Monsieur, 97 Hombleux, 206 Hoover Commission, 110 Horses: loss of, in war zone, 38; use of, in reconstruc- tion work, 169, 248 Huiron, 235 Hunting-land, total loss of, in war zone, 38 Imbert, Monsieur, 9 Industrial Reconstruction Service, 160, 210, 211 Industry: revival of, in war zone, 245; France's, needs, 248 Institut National Agrono- mique, 236 Inter-Allied Congress of World Agriculture at Beaume, 237 Inter-Allied Town-Planning Conference, 235 Italy, war bill of, 61 Jacquemin, Mayor, 107 Jardin d'Acclimatation, exhi- bition of quick construction at the, Paris, 232 Java!, Madame, 98 La Bass6e, 256 Labor: post-war problem of, 246 et seq.; pre-war power of, unions in devastated re- gion, 237 Labor Service, The, functions of, 163, 183 Lafferre, Monsieur, 217 Landres, 256 Langlade, Madame de, 100 Laon, 6, 219, 256 Larboye, 100 Lassigny, 99 Leather industry, damage to, in war zone, 49 Lebrun, Monsieur: 61, 158, 159; cited, 261 Leffevre, Madame, 100 Lens: pre-war and post-war pictures of, 21, 25; present- day condition of mines at, 40, 77, 180, 181; restoration of ruins of, 242 L^on, Monsieur Paul, 217 LeSeigneur, Monsieur, 162 Letrosne, Monsieur, 99 Lille: 10, 180, 195; industrial conditions in, to-day, 245 Longwy, 41 Lorraine, 84 Louvain, 59-61 Luchaire, Monsieur and Ma- dame, 100 Lumber, total loss on, in war zone, 39 Lyon, 256 Machinery, damage to, in war zone, 44, 45 Maisons de tout, 261 Maltrot, Monsieur, 162 Malaria, 90 Marin, Monsieur, 219 INDEX 271 Marne, The: 36, 27, 54, 64, 96, 101, US, 198, 199, 203, 237, 243 Marseilles, 256 Maryland, 31 Materials, Service of, work of the, 204 et seq. Maucl^re, Monsieur, 174; cited on adoption of towns, 258-260 Maucourt, 99 Meaux, 26 Meuse, 26, 55, 96, 195, 203 Meuthe-et-Moselle, 27, 41, 54, 203, 237 Mines, effect of German inva- sion upon, 39 et leq. Ministry of Agriculture, 158, 160, 161, 168, 172 Ministry of Armament, 211 Ministry of Commerce, 158, 160, 210 Ministry of Fine Arts, 53, 217 Ministry of Industrial Recon- stitution, 32, 161, 204, 227 Ministry of the Interior, 7, IS ; report of, 26, 27, 28, 29, 44, 70, 74; appropriation of, to meet needs of civilians in war zone, 80, 111; in rela- tion to reconstruction, 156 et seq., 193 Ministry of Liberated Re- gions, 32, 34, 78, 79, 80 et seq., 87, 96, 121-123, 143, 159-169, passim; 206; func- tions of the, 311 et seq., 215, 224, 234 Ministry of Public Works, ?.58, 193, 194, 215 Ministry of War, 7, 15 Mirman, Monsieur, 84 et seq. "Model Types of Agricultural Buildings." 190 Mondescourt, 100 Montdidier: 29, 112; plans for rebuilding, 197 Moreau, Madame, 99 Morgan, Miss, 97 Mulhouse, 256 Munition plants, peace-time activities of, 212 Musde Social, reconstruction work of the, 229, 230 Nancy: 26, 29, 54; refugees In, 85; plans for rebuilding, 197 National Federation of Build- ers, 33 National Hotel Syndicate, 253 Nesle, 20, 98, 99 Neuflieux, 99 Neuilly, 107 New Jersey, 36 Nieuport, 59 Noel, Senator, 97 Nomeny, plans for rebuilding, 197 Non-combatants, injuries to, 58 et seq. Nord Railroad, damage to, SO, 55; repair of, 215, 256 Notre-Dame, Cathedral of: injury to, by bombing- plane, 56, 218 Noyon, 6; destruction of ca- thedral at, 55, 68, 97, 99 ; de- struction and reconstruction at, 241 et seq. Odier, Madame, 98 CEuvre des Colonies de Va- cances de la Chauss^e du Maine, 96 Office of Agricultural Recon- struction, estimate of the, to replace losses in the war zone, 37 et seq., 163 2^2 INDEX Office du Batiment et des Tra- vaux Publics, 33; construc- tion activities of the, 234, 235 Office National de Tourisme, 253 Ogier, Monsieur, 9 OU industry, damage to, in war zone, 49 Oise, 11, 27, 65, 95, 171, 195, 222 Oiseau, Monsieur, attitude of, towa,rd coijperative recon- struction, 225, 226 Paper-mills, damage to, in war zone, 49 Pargny, 103, 104, 198 Paris: 8; shelling of, by long- range guns, 29, 76, 161, 256 Pas-de-Calais, 55, 171, 176; building resources of, 303; cooperative reconstruction work at, 327 Passchendaele Ridge, 23 Peasants, attitude of French, toward war, 66 et seq. Permanent Reconstruction Service: 162; functions of the, 179 et aeq.; in relation to raw materials, 202 et seq. P^ronne, 27, 98 P^rouse, Madame, 99 Pettoncourt, 256 Poelkappelle, 23 Polk, Miss Daisy, reconstruc- tion activities of, 199, 200 Pont-k-Mousson: 85; plans for rebuilding. 197, 265 Population: congestion of, back of war zone, 11; pre- war and post-war, of devas- tated region, 23; problem of sheltering returning, 178 et seq. Porchd, Monsieur, 162 Pomprez, incident at, 71, 72 Prifets, relief work of the, 80 et seq. Printing-plants, damage to, in war zone, 49 Prisoners, enslavement of, by Germans, 10, 11 et aeq, Provence pour le Nord, La, 96,97 Quesmy, 99 Quimper, 15 Railways: 5; damage to, in war zone, 50, 51; recon- struction work on, 182; progress of reconstruction of, 215, 216 Rambouillet, 255 Real Estate Service, estab- lishment of the, 163 Reconstruction: agricultural, 31 et seq.; estimated cost of, materials, 33; recent laws affecting, 144^154; French Government organ- ization for, 155 et aeq.; Bu- reau, 160; changes of, or- anization, 161 et seq.; needs of the, department, 190; co- operative societies, 191 et seq.; progress of perma- nent, 197 et seq.; Govern- ment efforts to establish standard prices for, 301; private organizations for, purposes, 222-340; simplify- ing the, problem, 345, 246; philanthropic phase of, 354 et aeq.; amateur efforts at house, 338-240; needs of France, 241 et seq. INDEX 278 Refugees: distribution of, 7; condition of, 8; provision for, by French Government, 8, 9, 11 et seq.; arrange- ments for housing of, 14 et seq.; starting the, again in life, 73; return of, after Battle of the Marne, 64-79, 7S et seq.; at Rheims, 92; private relief for, 95-133; work of American Red Cross in behalf of, 119 et seq.; Government care of, ISS et seq.; provisions made for return of, 163; transpor- tation of, 165, 166; cession to, of means of reconstruc- tion, 169 ; reconstruction work of returning, 204; Cld- menceau cited on plans for housing, 362, 263 Renaissance des Cit6s, 19S, 196, 204, 231 et seq. Rennes, 256 Repair shops. Government, 172 Reparceling of Rural Prop- erty Law, 148 et seq. Revault,. Monsieur Louis, 161 Revigny, 26, 195 Rey, Monsieur, 197 Rheims: 6, 7; ruin of, by Ger- mans, 19, 20, 34, 25, 29, 54, 66, 68, 77, 167, 180; example of, in contract-letting for clearing ruins, 181, 182; plans for rebuilding, 195, 196; preservation of tapes- tries in. Cathedral, 317; bfflck-making in, for recon- struction, 207 ; clearing away ddbris of. Cathedral, 219, 230; the future city of, 243; industrial conditions in, to-day, 345; attitude of na- tives of, toward sightseers, 354; partial adoption of, by Chicago, 256 Rhode Island, 30, 31 Ribecourt, 99 Rockefeller Tuberculosis Commission, activities of, in France, 231 Rolling-mills, present condi- tion of, in war zone, 41, 42 Rouen, 11 Roye, 98, 102, 197, 313, 355 "Rue de CaUfornie," in ViUe- mont, 200 Ste. Aldegonde, Madame de, 99 Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, 218 St. Denis, 218 St. Di6, 26, 56 St. Georges, 366 St. Gervals, church of, 56 St. Gobain, 22 St. Laurent-Blangy, 256 St. Mihiel: 65; incident at, 72, 73; reconstruction coopera- tion in, 224 St. Nazaire, 256 St. Quentin, 7, 54, 180; use of adobe in rebuilding, 307, 219, 256 St. R6my, church of, at Rheims, 54 St. Ren^Taillandier, Ma- dame, 99 Sampigny, 366 Sanitation, 5 Schools, 163 Seaports, damage to, ia devas- tated region, 51 Secretariat Fran^ais des Vil- lages Lib6r6s, Le, 99 Serbia, German wrongs to, 63 Sermaize-les-Bains: relief 274 INDEX work in, 103, 104; progress of rebuilding, 198 Service des Travaux de Prfe- miere Urgence; duties of the, 87, 88; activities of, 88 et seq., 163 Sfeanne, 26 Sheep : loss of, in war zone, 38, 348 Shurtleff, Rev. and Mrs., 97 Sillard, Monsieur, 162 Skinner, Miss, of Holyoke, Mass., 356, 258 Smith College Relief Unit, 20, 98, 101, 110 et aeq. Soci^te A^rienne Franfaise, 335 Soci^td des Agriculteurs de France, 97, 336 Soci6t6 des Architectes Diplo- mas: competition of the, 233; reconstruction work of the, 233 Soci^t6 Centrale des Archi- tectes, 233 Soci^t^ de MMicine Publique et du G^nie Sanitaire, 333, 233 Socidt^ Nationale pour I'En- couragement a I'Agricul- ture, 336, 337 Soci6t6 de Tiers Mandataires, 204, 227 Soil, richness of, in war zone, 3 4 Soissons, 6, 75, 109, 180, 219 Somme: 11, 20, 27, 55; battle of the, 68, 95; reestablish- ment of commune in the, 163, 164, 171, 173, 173, 177, 178; building supplies of the, 303; experimental re- building in the, 207, 222, 230 Students' Atelier Reunions, The, 97 Sugar-mills, damage to, in war zone, 48 Suippes, 256 Superior Council of Hygiene, 130 Suquet, Colonel, 163 Switzerland: 9; relief of French citizens by, 11 et seq. Syndicats d'Initiative, 233, 253 Tanning industry, damage to the, by Germans, 49 Tardieu, Monsieur, 251 Technical Service, The, 159 et seq. Tergnier, 35 Textile industry : pre-war con- dition of the, 4 ; 44-48 ; dam- age to, in war zone, 44, 45 Thann, 36 Thibaut, Madame, 97 Toul, 29 Touring-Club de France, 252 Town-Planning Law, French, 144 et seq. Towns, adoption of, 255 Tracy-le-val, 195, 231 Tramways, damage to, in war zone, SO, 51 Transportation Service: 163; functions of the, 184, 185 Troyes, 11 Union Centrale des Victimes des Dommages Causes par la Guerre, 235, 236 Union des Comit6s Ddpart- ementaux des Sinistr^s, 125 Union des Femraes de France, 99 United States: 41, 235; hous- ing problem in, 346; 35;2; attitude of, toward aiding devastated region in France, 255 INDEX 275 United States Army Univer- sity at Beaume, 237 United States Navy Reserve Corps, 103 Urgency Work Service, 162, 165; functions of the, 174 et seq.; 301 et seq. Vailly, plans for rebuilding, 197 Valenciennes, reconstruction work in, 197 Vassincourt, rebuilding of, 198, 199 Vaux, 25, 243, 244 Verdun: 25, 26, 39, 55; plans for rebuilding, 179; 219, 321, 244 Verne, Monsieur, 99 Versailles, 256 Viaducts, damage to, in war zone, 51 Vic-sur-Aisne, 101, 109 Vienne-le-Ch4teau, plans for rebuilding, 197 Village Reconstitute, Le, 99 Villemin, Monsieur, 33 ViUequier-Auraont, 99 Villers-Carhonnel, cooperative labor society in, 324 Vitrimont: 26; rebuilding of, 199, 300; adoption of, by an American committee, 255 Vitry-le-Frangais: 26, 96; progress of rebuilding near, 199 ; 235 Vosges, 37, 56 Vouziers, 256 War-damage Law: promulga- tion of, 127; scope of, 128, 129 War-indemnity Bill, 167 Warren, Mrs. Whitney, 256 Water-courses, loss on, in war zone, 39 Wells: menace of, in devas- tated region, 89, 90; restor- ation of, 183 Wheat, 34 Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation, recreation work of, in France, 361 et seq. Young Women's Christian Association, work of, in French factory towns, 361 Ypres: 59, 61; ruins of, cathedral to be conserved by Belgian Government, 220