1940-02-27 — Page 13

Tuesday,

HONGKONG TELEGRAPH

February 27, 1940.

VIGIL IN THE CITY

I VISITED Strasbourg while I was at the front. It is a city of death.

Of its population of 200,000 only such munici- pal employees remain as are necessary for its essential services and the police, the customs

officers and a certain num- ber of guldiers who are there tord the "city and keep it swept and garnished,

On the day, I was there, for a wonder the sun shone brightly; it was high noon, but you hal sinister feeling of a city at dead of night. It was like a city in a fairy tale who everyone who dwelt there was rap- ped in a magic sleep.

Here and there, in a house or a flat, a window has re- mained unshuttered and you cannot resist the notion that someone is living behind that close window, closed be- cause there is a nip in the air, and that at any moment a face will appear behind it; but you know that not a soul is there.

These hundreds and hundreds of houses, atrect after street,

Jane after lane, are empty.

Most of the shops have their shutters up, but some had nunc to put up, and in these the goods for sale remain in display, Women's underwear, sill stock-!

of the

by

DEAD

amply cottages, but they were dilapidated. The refugees set to with a will to make them habit- Jable. Now you could eat off the Moors.

The refugees have to sleep on straw mattresses, sometimen on Ithe floor, sometimes On deal trestles that they have made themselves. The authoritics aro providing wooden beds na fost as they can, but there is a shortage of wood, and it takes time to pro- vide beda In wartime for such numbers. There is still a lot of overcrowding,

But for all these inconveniences, these rend hardships, life stül goes on. The general health is good. Tho children, blue-eyed with apple-red checks, are neat and cloan. Though there are no books for their lessons, they go to school, bringing wood with them in the morning to heat the room, and the nuns teach them as beat they can in the circumstances. Thoy aro bright, nico-mannered children,

and for them indeed the whole thing in ather a lark.

It is wonderful with what spirit these people, snatched away from comfortable homes, bear their lot.

I went to see some stables stand- ing in the grounds of a chateau;

SOMERSET MAUGHAM

and the wind blow bitter third time in soventy years that its there were six stalls and in each on the tifh the aisle. The lovely economic life had boon disturbed was a straw mattress

Many of the manufac- ground, without sheets, and in pulpit with its delicate carving by war.

to plates dach stall tavo persons alept. A had been boarded up. All was turers have removed cold and grim and bare. It had where they could set up their fac- tiny boom at the side, I suppose already the look of the wreck of tories in Hafety and unless peace the old harness room, was their There was an open brought them Becurity for the ging room. 4-church.

future they would never return. Argilaco with pot boiling over THE city is waiting for "It is a dead city," he said.wo ticks.. destruction. Of that cathedral,,. "No.". I answered, "only sloop- which in the middle ages was ing.” considered one of the marvels of

1.All Quist on

the Western · Front," says the communiques, but this photograph was taken only three weeks ago. When it really starts-

2.-This is what happens to a city.

Photo-

graph on left was taken at Ypres in the last war.

ings, hate; they have a strange. They had to leave their cats be- the world, it may be that ly forlorn look. At a pastry hind and now, fed by the soldiers, one stone will stand upon cook's little cakes, sweets and they wander disconsolate and other.

window,

He sighed. "That is what hape, but it is a sleep from which the awakening will be bitter."

A little while later I visited the districts in the Charente to which the refugees from Alsace and Lorraine have been evacuat- led.

asked a woman whether there was anyone at the chatenu. "No," she said, "the pro- prietors only come down in the summer."

face. "It would be nice if they A smile broke on hor healthy lot un sleep in the servant's rooms," she said. "To sleep in a stable-well Our Saviour was born The department which I visited in one." A woman with a sense is a poor one, it has 300,000 in-of humour.

habitants and 35,000 refugees Work is gradually being secured not from the Moselle have been dis- for the refugees on the land or an-tributed among its towns and vil-in factories with adequate wages. Inges, but its 'habits and its stan- The unemployed receive from the dards of life aro very different State ten francs a day for each

what not lie-mouldering-in-them. The pigeons are fed too. And as if to call my attention from those to which the people adult and six franes for each flocks of them, and they gather to this dreadful possibility, pre-of more prosperous Lorraine have child under thirteen. They have round hungrily when a manently high up I saw half a dozen been accustomed. It was not borge familles, and two or three comes along with a great hunk planes. They were allied planes easy for the authorities to find families ofton pool their of bread and crumbling it up and were, I was told, hunting a lodging for this great number of sources, so that their meals are throws the pieces into the flutter-Messerschmitt that had been persons.

There were planty of good, and copious. ing crowd.

signalled. I watched them till THERE was no time to put The Cathedral was rose-red they were lost in a anything away when the evacua- against the pale blue of the walked on. tion took place. Things had to wintry sky and here men be left just as they were while khaki were still busy making a note of the siren broke the un- the owners huddled a few clothes protection for the central porch. earthly silence that wraps the into a bag, such household linen The stained glass of the windows city like a shroud; it rang through as, they could carry, and fled. has been removed to a place of

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the silliness with a merciless in-

tensity, echoing through those empty streets so that it seemed to usunil you from every direc- Lion; and though I had heard it more than once before it had in ominous that deserted city an horror. Two or three men started running, and, following them, I Į found myself at the police station.

There were perhaps a dozen of us, policemen, employees of the municipality and three or four soldiers. They were impatient and exasperated, but facetious.

One friendly stranger told mo that a German plane came over the city twice a day it such re- gular hours that they had called it after the popular French papera, "Paris-Midi" and "Paris Soir."

I lunched with the Mayor.

蟲

Ho

large heavy man, with an open friendly face, who spoke French with ́ún Alsatiam accent, loves his city and he looks for- ward to what he fears will be ita inovitable ruin with anguish. Ho.

FOREIGN EXCHANGE and General remains there with his wife to take. Banking Business transacted,

CURRENT ACCOUNTS opened aa caro of it und with courage wwalts FIXED DEPOSITS received for One Year the catastrophe which may at any or sharter periods in Local or Other Cur rencies at rates which will be quoted on moment befall.

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SAVINGS ACCOUNTS #bo opened in Trying to reassure him, I sug Local Currency and Sterling with interest gested that the Gormans were un- allowed at rates onlainable on application, ilkely to bomb what they still re-

The Bank's Head Office in London undertakes Executor & Trustee business, garded as a German city.

"They aholled it in 1870," ho

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trains from towns on the other Manager. Bida of the Rhine so that, sight- Beers might see Strasbourg burn."" But even though the city is as "yot apared the ravages of war its

future fills him with misgiving Ho reminded me that this wins tho

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