ing of hostilities, and they give yet another proof of the German
contention that Belgium, in conspiracy with Britain, had deliberately
prepared for the war--and, indeed, wanted it!) he Grande Place was
quite recognisable. It is among the largest public squares in Europe,
and one of the very few into which you could put a medium-sized
Atlantic liner. There is no square in London or (I think) New York into
which you could put a 10,000-ton boat. A 15,000-ton affair, such as
even the Arabic, could be arranged diagonally in the Grande Place
at Ypres.

This Grande Place has seen history. In the middle of the thirteenth
century, whence its chief edifices date, it was the centre of one of
the largest and busiest towns in Europe, and a population of
200,000 weavers was apt to be uproarious in it. Within three
centuries a lack of comprehension of home politics and the simple
brigandage of foreign politics had reduced Ypres to a population of
5,000. In the seventeenth century Ypres fell four times. At the
beginning of the nineteenth century it ceased to be a bishopric. In
the middle of the nineteenth century it ceased to be fortified; and in
the second decade of the twentieth century it ceased to be
inhabited. Possessing 200,000 inhabitants in the thirteenth century,
5,000 inhabitants in the sixteenth century, 17400 inhabitants at the
end of the nineteenth century, it now possesses 0 inhabitants. It is
uninhabited. It cannot be inhabited. Scarcely two months before I
saw it, the city--I was told--had been full of life; in the long period
of calm which followed the bombardment of the railway-station
quarter in November 1914 the inhabitants had taken courage, and
many of those who had fled from the first shells had sidled back
again with the most absurd hope in their hearts. As late as the third
week in April the Grande Place was the regular scene of commerce,
and on market-days it was dotted with stalls upon which were offered
for sale such frivolous things as postcards displaying the damage
done to the railway-station quarter.

Then came the major bombardment, which is not yet over.

You may obtain a just idea of the effects of the major bombardment
by adventuring into the interior of the Cathedral of St. Martin. This
Cathedral is chiefly thirteenth-century work. Its tower, like that of the
Cathedral at Malines, had never been completed--nor will it ever be,
now--but it is still, with the exception of the tower of the Cloth Ha