stumbled over stick-bombs
and unexploded shells. No plough can be put here--the only solution for
the land for years to come is forest. Just before we gained the road
at the bottom, where the car was awaiting us, we were startled by the
sudden flight of a covey of partridges.

The skies were grey when we reached the banal outskirts of a town where
the bourgeoise houses were modern, commonplace, save those which had
been ennobled by ruin. It was Arras, one of those few magic names,
eloquent with suggestions of mediaeval romance and art, intrigue and
chivalry; while upon their significance, since the war began, has been
superimposed still another, no less eloquent but charged with pathos.
We halted for a moment in the open space before the railroad station, a
comparatively new structure of steel and glass, designed on geometrical
curves, with an uninspiring, cheaply ornamented front. It had been,
undoubtedly, the pride of the little city. Yet finding it here had
at first something of the effect of the discovery of an
office-building--let us say--on the site of the Reims Cathedral.
Presently, however, its emptiness, its silence began to have their
effects--these and the rents one began to perceive in the roof. For
it was still the object of the intermittent yet persistent fire of
the German artillery. One began to realize that by these wounds it had
achieved a dignity that transcended the mediocre imagination of its
provincial designer. A fine rain had set in before we found the square,
and here indeed one felt a certain desolate satisfaction; despite the
wreckage there the spirit of the ancient town still poignantly haunted
it. Although the Hotel de Ville, which had expressed adequately the
longings and aspirations, the civic pride of those bygone burghers, was
razed to the ground, on three sides were still standing the varied yet
harmonious facades of Flemish houses made familiar by photographs. Of
some of these the plaster between the carved beams had been shot away,
the roofs blown off, and the tiny hewn rafters were bared to the sky.
The place was empty in the gathering gloom of the twilight. The gaiety
and warmth of the hut erected in the Public Gardens which houses the
British Officers' Club were a relief.

The experiences of the next day will remain for ever in my memory
etched, as it were, in sepia. My guide was a younger officer who had
seen heroic service, and I wondered constantly how his delicate frame
had