1940-02-27 — Page 3

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 soldiers who there to guard the city and keep it swept and garnished.

are

On the day I was there, for a wonder the sun shone brightly; it was high noon, but you had the sinister feeling of a city at dead of night. It was like a city in a fairy tale where everyone who dwelt there was wrap- 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 closed 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, street after street, Jane after lane, are empty.

Most of the shops have their shutters up, but some had none) to put up, and in these the goods i

for sale remain in display. Women's underwear, silk stock-

of the DEAD

were

they emply collages, but dilapidated. The refugees set to | with a will to make them habit- Jable. Now you could eat off the

floors,

The refugees, have to sleep on straw mattresses, sometimes 01 the floor, sometimes On dusal trestlos that they have mado themselves. The authorities aro providing wooden beds us fant us they can, but there is a shortage Jof wood, tand it takes time to pro- vile beds in wartime for such numbers. There is still a lot of Jovercrowding.

But for all these inconveniences, these rent hardships, life still goes Jon. The general health is good. Tho children, blue-eyed with apple-red cheeks, am neat and elean. Though there are no books for their lessons, they go to school, bringing wood with them in the morning to hent the room, and tho uns teach them as best they can in the circumstances. They are [bright, nice-mannered children, and for them indeed the whole. thing is rather 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- ling in the grounds of a chateau;

by SOMERSET MAUGHAM

A

safety and the wind blew bitter third time in seventy years that its there were six stalls and in cach through the aisle. The lovely jeconomle life had boon disturbed was a straw mattress On the pulpit with its delicate carving by war. Many of the manufac-ground, without sheets, and in had been boarded up. All was tureru have removed to places each stall two persons slept. cold and grim and bare. It had where they could set up their fac- tiny room at the side. I suppose already the look of the wreck of tories in safety and unless peace the old harness room, was their brought them security for the living room. There was an open a church.

future they would never return. fireplace with a pot boiling over

"It is a dead city," he said. two sticks. "No." I answered, "only sleep-

THE city is waiting for destruction. Of that cathedral, which in the middle ages was ing." considered one of the marvels of

.-"All Quiet 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 loft was taken at Ypres in the fast war.

He sighed. That is what I hope, but it is a sleep from which the awakening will be bitter.”

ed.

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

land or

A little while later I visited the districts in the Charente to face. "It would be nice if they A smile broke on her healthy which the refugees from Alsace let us sleep in

the servant'a and Lorraine have been evacuat-rooms," she said. "To sleep in a stable-well Our Saviour was born The department which I visited in one." A woman with a senso in n poor one, it has 300,000 in of humour. habitants and 95,000 refugees Work is gradually being secured ings, hats; they have a strange-They had to leave their cats be- the world, it may be that not from the Moselle have been dis- for the refugees on the __ly_forlorn_look...____At__n_pastry_hind and now, fed by the soldiers, one stone will stand upon an-tributed among its towns and vll-in factories with adequate wages,

cook's little cakes, sweets and they wander disconsolate and other.

Ingres, but its habits and its stan-The unemployed receive from the dards of life are very different State ten franes a day for each what not le mouldering in the mew. The pigeons are fed too,

flocks of them, and they gather to this dreadful possibility, pre- of more prosperous Lorraine have child under thirteen.

And as if to call my attention from those to which the people adult and six francs for each window.

round hungrily when man sently high up I saw half a dozen been accustomed.

They have comes along with a great hunk planes. They were allled planes easy for the authorities to find families often

not barco families, and two or three 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

pool their throws the pieces into the flutter- Messerschmitt that had been persons. ing crowd.

There were plenty of good and copious. signalled. I watched them till The Cathedral Was rose-red they were lost in a cloud and against the pale blue of the walked on. wintry sky and here men in

Then, on a sudden, the sinister

THERE was no time to put anything away when the evacua- tion took place. Things had to he 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 the stillness with a merciless in-

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tensity, echoing through those Jumpty streets so that it seemed to assail you from every direc tion; and though I had heard i more than once bofore it had in that deserted city an ominous horror. Two or three men started running, and, following them, I found myself at the police statlon.

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