ing. Were not the military
laws against looting of the most drastic character! And at last I
came to the end of the little street. There are many such streets in
Ypres. In fact, the majority of the streets were like that street. I did
not visit them, but I have no doubt that they were in the same
condition. I do not say that the inhabitants fled taking naught with
them. They must obviously have taken what they could, and what
was at once most precious and most portable. But they could have
taken very little. They departed breathless without vehicles, and
probably most of the adults had children to carry or to lead. At one
moment the houses were homes, functioning as such. An alarm,
infectious like the cholera, and at the next moment the deserted
houses became spiritless, degenerated into intolerable museums
for the amazement of a representative of the American and the
British Press! Where the scurrying families went to I never even
inquired. Useless to inquire. They just lost themselves on the face of
the earth, and were henceforth known to mankind by the generic
name of "refugees"--such of them as managed to get away alive.

After this the solitude of the suburbs, with their maimed and rusting
factories, their stagnant canals, their empty lots, their high, lusty
weeds, their abolished railway and tram stations, was a secondary
matter leaving practically no impression on the exhausted
sensibility.

A few miles on the opposite side of the town were the German
artillery positions, with guns well calculated to destroy Cathedrals
and Cloth Halls. Around these guns were educated men who had
spent years--indeed, most of their lives--in the scientific study of
destruction. Under these men were slaves who, solely for the
purposes of destruction, had ceased to be the free citizens they
once were. These slaves were compelled to carry out any order
given to them, under pain of death. They had, indeed, been
explicitly told on the highest earthly authority that, if the order came
to destroy their fathers and their brothers, they must destroy their
fathers and their brothers: the instruction was public and historic.
The whole organism has worked, and worked well, for the
destruction of all that was beautiful in Ypres, and for the break-up of
an honourable tradition extending over at least eight centuries. The
operation was the direct result of an order. The order had been
carefully weighed and considered. The successful execution