FROM OUR SPECIAL ENVOY REIMS, December 20.

Anyone who has followed the prodigious work that the people of Reims had to do to free their city from its ruins has come to doubt their memories today. The "Smile of Reims", this archaeological jewel, has not been found, but it is a new city that smiles at you with all the brilliance of its white stones, its new houses and its stores that seem to have prepared for a little Paris the luxury and elegance of their windows, their displays, and Reims, which received you in huts the day after the amnesty, now has palaces, palaces to welcome you.
But those who have resurrected it, saved it, have too much respect for the truth, they have fought and suffered too much, not to warn you against exaggeratedly optimistic impressions. You can believe your eyes; do not judge at first glance. Take a walk...
In fact, there remain around the cathedral, still painful, many holes, ruins, gaps, which time will only slowly fill or make us forget. Without doubt, a new city has arisen, and a thousand active building sites prolong, in spite of the season, the work which has given such marvelous results. But much remains to be done, and the last effort, the one which will give back to the city its laborious life, its normal prosperity, is perhaps the most difficult to carry out. Last Sunday, for the fifth time, the general assembly of the reconstruction cooperative met. It was less dense, less numerous, but people talked among themselves and its devoted president greeted with emotion the "last square" of his faithful friends before stating what more perseverance, courage, money and confidence are needed to complete the definitive victory that we call resurrection.
Public opinion has gradually turned away from us. This is indeed the new fact that this year 1924 has brought us, declared the Marquis de Polignac before finalizing what has been called "the scandals of the devastated regions". The country must be told the truth.
This truth is the errors, the mistakes, the weaknesses that have crept into the formidable work and which are "in a way the risk of all human activity". It is nonetheless a fact that the ten devastated departments paid, in 1924, nearly five billion in taxes and that all the credits allocated to the victims are in reality reimbursed by them with interest.
A walk in Reims under the arcades of the square and the rue Drouet-d'Erlon, in the streets of Talleyrand, Vesle, l'Etape, the stores compete in coquetry and there are some that would be in their place on our boulevards.
Here in a shop window, under the arcades, are some Parisian notes: Jade is fashionable; For the dance hall, real puma is next door to lizard-style, tortoiseshell and real ivory. Shops: Au chic parisien, Aux Gourmets, do not lie to their signs. The house Au chemin des Dames, a specialty of ladies' clothing, is sticking to a temporary installation; but, right next door, sumptuous shop windows announce an "exhibition of the latest novelties of the season". And there is Le Poussin bleu, Aux Poilus de la Marne, etc.
It seems that luxury is here like one of the signs of the times and that we must beware of a superficial impression that can lead to false conclusions.

Some have seen big in the use of their war damages, we are told, and they were right. Shops have a spacious setting for a clientele that will grow. On the other hand, Reims has a luxury trade that would suffice for a population of 300,000 inhabitants and it had 120,000 before the war. Perhaps here we have counted too much on it quickly passing from the rank of martyr city to that of opulent city. Progress is not going so fast. Life is expensive, more expensive than in Paris, and this is easily explained: the countryside gives little and it is largely Paris, with the Halles, which supplies us. The same error was made in the construction of the report: Beautiful houses with modern comfort and high rents have been built. Also we see falling, at the same time as the value of these buildings, the price of their vacant apartments. Perhaps we will soon have for 4,000 what was offered 10,000 or 12,000. This is not without some disappointments and too many people have learned at their expense that the rich clientele is limited and that we tend to leave the era where money was sown without worrying about tomorrow.
The textile industry is experiencing real difficulties. Reims had been the city of wool since the Middle Ages. In 1914 it enjoyed great prosperity through combing, spinning, and weaving. But everything was ruined, the clearing only took place after a year and a half, the reconstruction lasted several years and very beautiful factories that could contain six hundred looms only have twenty-five or thirty.

For a certain number of industries, the question of damages has not yet been settled, the major files are subject to review and the interested parties do not yet know exactly what they can count on. We can now move on to the most comforting observations.
The typical industry of Reims, that of champagne, resumed immediately and regained, for the first time in 1920, despite the closure of large markets such as the United States, Germany and Russia, the pre-war sales figure.

Other markets having opened up and French consumption having doubled, this base figure has just been exceeded. About thirty-five million bottles were shipped this year by Reims, Epernay, Châlons. The figure for 1912-1913 was 30,097,644. The related industries followed the same happy progression.

The expansion of Reims

Reims emerges larger, more extensive, from the ordeal that threatened to destroy it. The city has developed on the outskirts, in its suburbs. and it gave birth, where there were only fields of crops, to a village of 3,000 souls which is modestly called the Foyer Rémois. This model village, built with twelve different types of houses, multiplying the notes of an amiable diversity, has a church with squat pillars, and a vast and attractive communal house has opened, to large families, to young households already having several children. This garden city, with reduced rents, will inspire that which the city must undertake and which will be called La maison blanche.
A lunar landscape has become again the Parc des Sports, the Parc Pommery and the famous Collège des Athletes. The Tennis Club offers to the people of Rémois its playgrounds and a second swimming pool, wide, deep, surmounted by a pleasant decoration in Pompeian style.
The moving cathedral, which suffered so much from the fire of its scaffolding, received a new extremely light one, behind which the statues were tied up by makeshift means that somehow remedy their disintegration.
Everything that could be preserved, everything that can be reconstituted of local art, will be put back in place definitively and Reims, so worthy of attracting tourists from all over the world, will neglect nothing, time helping, of what can make it once again a city that knows how to smile and, full of confidence, work.

ROGER VALBELLE.