Courtesy of State of A>w Tork Conserration Commission 



SUCH IS THE DESOLATION IN NORTHERN FRANCE 



A tree — unlike a man — receives unprotected the full storm of gunfire. Thus the trees which chanced to be along 

 the firing line in France have given themselves for freedom. Their presence has allowed triumph with the least 

 bloodshed in both offensive and defensive attacks, — but it will take a century to restore these forests of 

 the battle front. Not only are the trees dead but the exjiosed forest floor also has been destroyed, 

 tortured into hills and hollows and filled with fragments of metal and with shells that did not explode. 

 The photograph shows a small part of the famous Height of Hartmannsweilerkopf in Alsace, cap- 

 tured and recaijtured a dozen times by French and Germans. Many forests on the Alsatian slope 

 of the Vosges Mountains are totally destroyed. Over slope and hilltop there is nothing to be 

 seen but dark skeletons of trees, shell holes in the ground, and the countless crosses that 

 mark the graves of the dead. The country about Verdun is described as "the dead hills 

 of the Meuse," for the majestic trees of the Forest of Argonne stand today mere 

 bullet-pitted stumps. This forest, thirty miles long and from one to eight miles 

 wide, in the region of the Meuse and the sources of the Aisne, has seen more 

 bloodshed than any other part of the wide battle fields of the Western Front. 

 It saved Yerdun, but the fighting transformed green hills and valleys into a 

 place of death, into square mile upon square mile of desolation 



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