WILL FORESTS BE PLANTED ON OLD BATTLE FIELDS? 



I~N A special dispatch from the front to the Chicago 

 Daily News, Paul Scott Mowrer asks : What is to be 

 done with the zone of vast chaotic battle fields in 

 France after the war? It has been said that this land will 

 be eminently proper for cultivation, as its complete up- 

 heaval by shell explosions will have served to renovate the 

 soil. Unfortunately, the matter is more complex than this. 

 The war belt, varying in width from one to several kilo- 

 meters, reaches right across France, from the sea to Switz- 

 erland. Most of this belt, being encumbered only with 

 barbed wire entanglements, several net works of trenches 

 and a scattering of shell hohs, can probably be put under 

 cultivation again within a year or so after the war. The 

 work of cleaning up the ground will here not be insuper- 

 able. But in other places, such as Verdun, the Aisne 



nants of trenches a labor in itself nothing less than 

 Herculean there remains the danger of striking unex- 

 ploded shells, which, lying just out of sight under the 

 surface, might explode at first touch of the plow. There 

 are thousands of such shells, all primed and needing only 

 a slight jar to go off, buried in every one of the great 

 French battle fields. As for the soil being rendered more 

 fertile by the upheaval it has undergone, there is reason 

 to think that in too many spots just the reverse will have 

 occurred ; instead of being more fertile, it will be less so, 

 for the upper soil has been completely covered over by a 

 thick scattering of subsoil blown up by the deep plunging 

 shells. In short, it is doubtful if these regions can be 

 brought under cultivation again. 



It has been proposed to turn these regions into forest 



International Film Service h'rt-nrh Official Photograph 



A TYPICAL FIELD OF BATTLE AFTER HEAVY BOMBARDMENT 



In tilt region "f Moulin dc LarTaux. this field, over which the line of hattle has passed expressing now only barrenness and destruction may 

 one <lay be clothed again in forest green, and know once more "the peace of quiet aisles." 



plateaux and the Sommc regions which include thous- 

 ands and thousands of acres of what was once farm- 

 land and pasture the chaos is such that to restore it to 

 agriculture seems almost out of the question. 



In these regions, the shell holes touch one another, and 

 some of them are ten or fifteen feet deep. The ground 

 is kneaded with bits of hashed up barbed wire, and shell 

 splinters, human bones and debris of every kind. Even 

 granting that it would ultimately be possible to clear up 

 this ground and level the shell holes, dugouts and rc'm- 



518 



lands. The proposal is not without merit. It would 

 solve many difficulties, and would be more practical, as 

 many of France's rich forest reserves have been dimin- 

 ished greatly since the beginning of the war, to obtain 

 wood for military purposes. The owners of land in 

 the regions in question would doubtless object to turning 

 these fields, some of which were formerly so rich, into 

 forests, but when they begin to realize the practical 

 difficulties in the way of attempting to begin cultivation 

 again, and especially if they are offered suitable compen- 



