December 2S, 1917 
LAJNU & WATER 
Can the Battlefields of France be Farmed Again? 
By an American Farmer 
A GOOD (leal lias been written about tlie rebuilding 
/^ of the destroyed towns and villages in the battle- 
Z_Sl tavaged area of Northern France, and it is also 
^ JL. encouraging to record that a good deal of tangible 
progress has been made toward getting started with this part 
of the restoration work as soon as there is opportunity to do 
so. Money in abundance— much of it from America— has 
been pledged, so that a beginning on a grand scale is possible 
just as soon as labour is available — probably not long after 
the declaration of a general peace. 
Much has also been written about the restoration of the 
farming land of the battle areas, but — in contrast to the pro- 
gress that lias been made in getting ready to rebuild the towns 
and villages — little in a practical way has vet been done 
toward taking up the task itself. It may be just as well to 
point out at the beginning, that any programme which does 
not make the restoration of the farming land a condition 
precedent to the rebuilding of the villages will be a sadly mis- 
directed if not a futile one. This will be readily imderstood 
from the fact that practically the only raison d'etre of 99 
per cent, of these little rural communities was as trading 
centres for the farms and farmers, so that unless the farms 
themsehes are restored to cultivation, there will be nothing 
to warrant the existence of the villages, whose peoples must 
inevitably drift elsewhere to find a livelihood. . 
This being so, it is a great pity that practically all that has 
been written on the question of restoring them to their former 
producti\ity has been of a pessimistic nature. There is an 
old saying to the effect that " war passes the theorist by and 
sinks its plummets deep in human experience." Most of 
the pessimistic writing to which I have referred is by theorists, 
who do not realise that " war has passed them by," and that 
their " theorisings " — no less mischievous than discouraging- - 
have already been confuted by cold facts. 
Poisoned Soil 
Ever since the battle of the Sommc was well under way — 
with its obliterative artiller\' preparations and barrages— 
I have been reading in French, English and American news- 
papers and reviews articles or letters — several from not un- 
eminent scientists and engineers — all purporting to demon- 
strate beyond the peradventurc of a doubt that the once 
fertile agricultural region of Northern France — that part of 
it, of course, which had been most heavily fought over and 
bombarded — could not but remain an absolute desert (so far 
as agricultural jiroduction was concerned) for anywhere 
from a minimum of two or three decades to half a century and 
more. Two or three distinguished chemists^distinguished 
at least to the extent that each had a long line of letters 
after his name — held that the soil was so thoroughly 
" poisoned " from the fumes of asphyxiating gases and high 
explosives that it would be many years before it could become 
suflRciently purified to support any kind of plant life. A 
Professor of Agricultural Science was equally certain that the 
bringing to the surface of so much of the lower strata of soil 
— which contains little or no humus (decaying vegetable 
matter) — would render the land too sterile to be worth cultiva- 
. ting for an indefinite but very long time. 
Practically all of the more " learned " of these theorists 
appeared to base their beliefs that the French battlefields 
were doomed to rauain deserts on the " poisoned soil " or 
" debilitated soil " ideas. N"'one of them — so far as I remem- 
ber — claimed to have made any study of the question in the 
battle area itself. If they had — especially during the last 
Rummer —they vv ould have seen a few things calculated radi- 
cally to alter tlu'ir opinions. What these things are I will 
outline presently. 
Besides these laboratory experts, there were— indeed, 
there still are— many level-headed practical men— including 
not a few soldiers who have fought in France — who have 
written or said that the more intensively bombarded areas 
of the battle zone could never be cultivated again for the 
simple reason that they were so frightfully torn up from shell 
and mme explosions that it would be impracticable to move 
any agricultural implements over them. The land is not worth 
the labour of levelling by hand, they say, and yet— because 
there is no room for machinery to get about that appears 
to be the only way the thing can be done. They also point 
out that the hundreds of miles of barbed-wire inextricably 
mixed with the earth will make it extremely difficult to plough 
or harrow, while the countless thousand's of burietl unex- 
ploded shells- which might conceivably go off when turnid 
up — introduce an element of actual danger. 
The views of these latter are entitled to the respect due to 
any honest opinion based on first-hand observations. Even, 
.so, however, I ;un convinced that their pessimism regarding 
the problem in hand is only less warranted than that of the 
theorists pure and simple. That is to say : the physical 
difficulties — great as they are — in the way of cultivating even 
the most heavily bombarded regions of the war zone, are not 
going to prove an insunnountable obstacle to their restoration 
to productivity ; the averred " poisoning of the soil !" is the 
merest " bogey," and is not going to prove an obstacle at all. 
Ill Advised Pessimism 
How mischievous tlfese not ill-intentioned but certainly 
ill-advised pessimistic utterances ' ave been I had opportunity 
to j iidge recently, when I talked with a distinguished French- 
man who is directing the movement for the restoration of 
villages and lands of the battlefields after the war. 
" Monej- has been pledged," he said, " for the rebuilding 
of the destroyed towns almost faster than I can allocate it ; 
but whenever I endeavour to present the case for funds to be 
used in putting land again under cultivation, I am met at 
once with scepticism and luke-warmness. This or that 
scientist, I am told, or this or that General or Cabinet Minister, 
has said it can never be done ; so why should they be asked 
to subscribe money for a scheme that is foredoomed to failure 
when the needs for actual housing are so great ? That sums 
up the popular attitude in the matter, and so far my efforts 
to show that there will be no use in restoring the villages 
unless the farms arc restored at the same time, have not met 
with much success. Moreover, until a presentation of the 
true facts of the case undoes the harm that has been done by 
all this loose talking and writing, we arc going to be greatly 
liStndicapped in making adequate provisions to get the work 
under way. Anything you can do to show what utter non- 
sense is this idea of aljandoning so many square miles of our 
fairest farming lands and allowing them to revert to primeval 
desert without an effort to reclaim them, will be a great ser- 
vice to my country and my countrymen." 
To those scientists who hold that the land of the battle 
areas has been " poisoned " beyond remedy by gas and shell 
fumes, I might point out that, while these fumes occasionally 
bleach and cause fresh grass and foliage towilt anddiedowni, 
the effect is only temporary' — usually only for a few days, 
rarely for more than a week or two. If the roots are injured 
it is from being torn up by explosions, not from the fumes. 
In any event, the soil itseff is not deleteriously affected. .\s 
to the effect of the constant churning of the earth by bursting 
shells, I might point out that sub-soil cultivation by the use 
of dynamite has been practised with invariable success in 
America forseveral years. I myself iiave practically rehabih- 
tated a run-down and almost worthless apricot orchard on 
my California ranch by cracking up systematically the under- 
lying " hard-pan " with dynamite and giving the starved 
roots a chance to penetrate to the moisture-laden levels 
below. Even a barley field increased its yield fifty per cent, 
after a thorough tearing up by exploding small charges of 
dynamite at twenty foot inter\*als. In all the world I know 
of no land that would be likely to benefit more by a cracking 
up of its sub-soil than that "of Northern France, underlaid 
(as it is) by strata of decomposing chalk. Well, just such a 
cultivation it has now received, and a hundred times more 
thorough a one than any farmer who had to buy the ex- 
plosive himsel f would ever give it. 
To the Professor of Agricultural Science who maintained 
that the land of the battle areas would be " debilitated " by 
the admixture of a great quantity of non-hunius-bearing soil 
from below, I might point out that for every pound of the 
latter thrown up by a shell from the apex of its crater, 
anywhere from fifty to a hundred pounds of earth rich in 
decaying vegetable matter is scattered from the frustum of the 
cone which is torn out nearer the surface. A one or two, or 
even a five per cent, admixture of non-humus-bearing sub- 
soil will do the surface soil more good than harm, as any farmer 
who has practised extra deep ploughing will testify. I might, 
I say, point out all of these things to the scientists and pro- 
fessors, in an cndeavom- to controvert their theories by what 
I know to be facts. Fortunately, a better way was open to 
me. Through the courtesy of the French and the British 
War Othccs, I made a visit in person to the principal battle 
areas of the Western Front, there to study at first hand— in 
the liglit of my experience as a farmer— the problem of the 
