onnaissance. Distribution of the enemy's
forces. Copy of a German Divisional Circular. Notes on the German system
of signalling from their trenches.' You know the usual kind of thing.
Just now we're trying to discover how many guns they've got in the
batteries of their new formations. We've noticed that their 77-mm.
projectiles now arrive in groups of four, and we suspect that two guns
have been withdrawn. But it may be only a blind."

As we turned out into the darkened street to make our way to our
respective offices a supply column rumbled over the _pave_, each of the
seventy-two motor-lorries keeping its distance like the ships of a
fleet. Despatch-riders with blue and white armlets whizzed past on their
motor-bicycles, and high overhead was the loud droning hum of the
aeroplane going home to roost. The thunder of guns was clearly audible
from the north-east. The D.A.A.G. turned to me and said, "It's Hill 60
again. My old regiment's up there. And to-morrow the casualty returns
will come in. Good God! will it never end?"

XXVI

FIAT JUSTITIA

PARQUET
du
Tribunal de Iere Instance
d'Ypres

At last I had found it. I had spent a mournful morning at Ypres seeking
out the _procureur du roi_, and I had sought in vain. He was nowhere to
be found. Ypres was a city of catacombs, wrapt in a winding-sheet of
mortar, fine as dust, which rose in clouds as the German shells winnowed
among the ruins. The German guns had been threshing the ancient city
like flails, beating her out of all recognition, beating her into shapes
strange, uncouth, and lamentable. The Cloth Hall was little more than a
deserted cloister of ruined arches, and the cathedral presented a
spectacle at once tragic and whimsical--the brass lectern still stood
upright in the nave confronting a congregation of overturned chairs as
with a gesture of reproof. The sight of those scrambling chairs all
huddled together and fallen headlong upon one another had something
oddly human about it; it suggested a panic of ghosts. Ypres is an
uncanny place.

We returned to Poperinghe, our way choked by a column of French troops,
pale, hollow-eyed, their blue uniforms bleached by sun and rain until
all the virtue of the dye had run out of them. Before resuming our hunt
for the _procureur du roi_--who, we now found, had removed from Ypres to
Poperinghe--we entered a restaurant for lunch. It was crowded with
French office