cultural town, with a
town hall whose architecture showed that Flanders was not very far
off, the soil changed and the country grew more sylvan and
delectable. And the sun shone hotly. Camps alternated with
orchards, and cows roamed in the camps and also in the orchards.
And among the trees could be seen the blue draperies of women at
work. Then the wires of the field-telephones and telegraphs on their
elegantly slim bamboos were running alongside us. And once or
twice, roughly painted on a bit of bare wood, we saw the sign: "Vers
le Front." Why any sign should be necessary for such a destination I
could not imagine. But perhaps humour had entered into the matter.
At length we perceived Arras in the distance, and at a few
kilometres it looked rather like itself: it might have been a living city.

When, however, you actually reach Arras you cannot be deceived
for an instant as to what has happened to the place. It offers none of
the transient illusion of Rheims. The first street you see is a
desolation, empty and sinister. Grimy curtains bulge out at smashed
windows. Everywhere the damage of shells is visible. The roadway
and the pavements are littered with bits of homes. Grass flourishes
among the bits. You proceed a little further to a large, circular place,
once imposing. Every house in it presents the same blighted
aspect. There is no urban stir. But in the brief intervals of the
deafening cannonade can be heard one sound--blinds and curtains
fluttering against empty window-frames and perhaps the idle, faint
banging of a loose shutter. Not even a cat walks. We are alone, we
and the small group of Staff officers who are acting as our hosts.
We feel like thieves, like desecrators, impiously prying. At the other
side of the place a shell has dropped before a house and sliced
away all its front. On the ground floor is the drawing-room. Above
that is the bedroom, with the bed made and the white linen smoothly
showing. The marvel is that the bed, with all the other furniture, does
not slide down the sloping floor into the street. But everything
remains moveless and placid. The bedroom is like a show. It might
be the bedroom of some famous man exposed to worshipping
tourists at sixpence a head. A few chairs have fallen out of the
house, and they lie topsy-turvy in the street amid the debris; no one
has thought to touch them. In all directions thoroughfares branch
forth, silent, grass-grown, and ruined.

"You see the stro