people, and was encouraged by instructors who visited the villages 
and country towns, to show the people how fruit could be grown to the 
best advantage. One of these instructors declared not long before the 
war broke out that he would not be content until every bare wall in 
the villages and open towns of Belgium supported its fruit tree. 
The day war was declared every able-bodied Frenchman of military 
age was called to the colors, and in Belgium this was also the situation. 
Their system of conscription is not as comprehensive as the French, 
but every able-bodied man has now been taken off the land (or de- 
ported to Germany). 
The present condition of the land in France can best be shown by 
quoting from reports just received from England. 
"Next in point of wickedness stands the cutting down of fruit 
trees. This is one of the richest fruit districts even in fruit-growing 
France. Not merely were there orchards and fruit trees round 
almost every house, and avenues of fruit trees along the roads, but 
practically every field in the countryside was studded with fine 
trees, from 20 to 100 years old — apples, pears, and cherries. They 
stood over all the landscape with the regularity of chessmen on a 
chessboard. I write with due caution when I say that tens of 
thousands of these trees have been felled. They He across the 
fields in ranks like men lying in extended order, not a branch hav- 
ing been lopped away, and each stump having a white, newly cut 
top to it. A few trees remain standing, but of these whole groups 
have rings neatly clipped round them so that they will die. 
"Perhaps the felling of the fruit trees is felt by this army of 
French peasants as the foulest stab of all. As I travelled back 
through Kent, and looked up from my newspaper and saw an 
orchard, I found myself exclaiming, 'Why, there is an orchard 
standing!' When you have traversed mile after mile of that vast 
ruined orchard in France, even a townsman feels as in a nightmare. 
At the end of a day of it the rage mounts in your throat. It is 
difficult indeed, but vitally important, to make the people of this 
island realize the coldly scientific method of the Hun. The war 
is for him an act of commerce. It begins to appear that, after all, 
the result of it may not be a capital investment for himself, and, 
therefore, he destroys systematically the capital of his future com- 
petitor. 
From Serbia we receive the following: 
"With the exception of the remnant left from the little body of 
men fighting now at Salonika there will, after the war, be hardly 
