ll, the Cathedral, and various districts of
the town, but to try and describe the awful condition of what was once
the most beautiful town in Belgium would be to attempt the impossible.
No pen, and no imagination, could do justice to it. The wildest dreams
of Dante could not conjure up such terrible, such awful scenes.

The immensity of the outrage gripped me perhaps more completely when I
stood upon the heap of rubble that was once the most beautiful piece of
architecture of its kind in all the world. The Cloth Hall, and the
Cathedral, looked exactly as if some mighty scythe had swept across the
ground, levelling everything in its path. The monster 15-inch German
shells had dismembered and torn open the buildings brick by brick.
Confusion and devastation reigned everywhere, no matter in what
direction you looked. It was as if the very heavens and the earth had
crashed together, crushing everything between them out of all semblance
to what it had been.

The ground was literally pock-marked with enemy shell-holes. The stench
of decaying bodies followed me everywhere. At times the horror of it all
seemed to freeze the understanding, and it was difficult to realise that
one was part and parcel of this world of ours. Literally, horror was
piled upon horror. And this was the twentieth century of which men
boasted; this was civilisation! Built by men's hands, the result of
centuries of work. Now look at them; those beautiful architectural
monuments, destroyed, in a few months, by the vilest spawn that ever
contaminated the earth. A breed that should and would be blotted out of
existence as effectively as they had blotted out the town of Ypres.

Beneath one large building lay buried a number of our gallant soldiers,
who were sheltering there, wounded. The position was given away by
spies, with the result that the Germans poured a concentrated fire of
shells upon the helpless fellows, and the shelling was so terrific that
the whole building collapsed and buried every living soul beneath the
debris.

As I stood upon the heap tears came into my eyes, and the spirits of the
brave lads seemed to call out for vengeance. And even as I stood and
pondered, the big guns rang out, the very concussion shaking bricks and
dust upon me as I stood there. While filming the scene, German shells
came hurtling and shrieking overhead, exploding just behind me and
scattering the debris of the ruins high above and whizzing in my
direction.

To