November, 1920 
51 
valuable minerals of which the to.p soil, 
used for generations, had been depleted. 
The problem, therefore, of restoring the 
French soil is one of engineering. Not 
having received indemnity as yet from Ger¬ 
many, the French Government cannot af¬ 
ford to advance “damages” for the purpose 
of making farm lands available which, 
when restored by expensive machinery, will 
not, for a considerable period, produce 
crops that will pay the expense of the 
work. They have neither the funds nor 
the material to restore these lands to pre¬ 
war productivity, but the help of the Gov¬ 
ernment and the American Committee, to¬ 
gether with the remarkable courage of the 
French people, have resulted in bringing 
back into cultivation in the Canton of 
Coucy alone, fifty per cent of the original 
area. 
The French are a people who love plants 
and everything that grows, but in places 
like the Department of the Aisne, where 
every bit of food, all live-stock and every 
tool were either taken away or destroyed, 
little can be done without help. 
Tractors brought to France by the 
American Committee are distributed from 
special centers to the small farmer and 
loaned to him until his land is cleared, 
(Continued on page 66) 
St. Paul aux Bois was almost com¬ 
pletely destroyed, but now over 
200 people are living in its ruins 
and working in their gardens 
The American Committee began its work 
in June, 1917, under French control. The 
members are actively co-operating with 
the farmers. By Harry B. Lachman 
As the Germans left one small farm and 
garden, which are now cleared and pro¬ 
ducing crops. The photographs illustrating 
this article are from the American Commit¬ 
tee for Devastated France, Inc. 
and of machinery, it has become essential for 
the small fanners that they should form them¬ 
selves into agricultural syndicates, which the 
Government has provided for, and with which 
the American Committee is co-operating in 
providing and loaning tractors. 
The French are past masters of agriculture, 
but they are without tools and machinery, and 
even shelter in thousands of cases. The sys¬ 
tematic destruction by the Germans of similar 
parts of all agricultural implements, making 
it impossible to assemble remaining parts, left 
the French peasants unable to put together any 
of the wreckage of their farming implements. 
If France had the needed tractors and motor- 
driven implements, the soil could easily be 
brought back to its original fertility; as a 
matter of fact, the trench digging and the 
shell craters which have upheaved the under 
soil, actually represent the 
type of cultivation advocated One of the American 
by practical agricultural ex- headquarters. One hun- 
perts. It has brought to the dred and thirty villages 
surface, without destroying it, territory supervised by 
the deep soil which contains the Committee 
