Great Mother Hen at a time when they most needed its care. We
are all very much like big children, and to all of us there are times
when we need some one to take us by the hand and speak words of
consolation and good cheer.

CHAPTER X

CELLARS AND DUG-OUTS ON THE WESTERN FRONT

My son, who is somewhere in France, tells me what
a great comfort your Y.M.C.A. has been to him from
the time he started his training at ---- and all
through his stopping-places almost up to the
trenches.

UNLESS one has seen for oneself the ravages of war, it is impossible to
conceive the horror and desolation of a place like Ypres. Before the war
it was one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, to-day it is nothing
more than a heap of ruins. It is enough to make even the most
unemotional of men cry, to stand in that once beautiful Cloth Hall
Square and see how complete is the destruction--not one house, not a
single room left intact--everything destroyed beyond recognition. And
what of the Y.M.C.A. in Ypres? There we found the Red Triangle standing
erect amid the ruins, and following the hand that pointed down we came
to a little cellar Y.M.C.A.--only a cellar and yet it had been a source
of helpfulness and inspiration to tens of thousands of our brave men. It
was wonderfully fitted up, contained a small circulating library, piano,
and everything needed for the canteen side of things. Not only that, it
was a centre to work from. Between the cellar and the enemy were nine
dug-outs at advanced stations. As these were all evacuated by order of
the Military during the German offensive in April 1918, there can be no
objection to their location being indicated. The first consisted of a
ruined house and a Nissen hut at the Asylum; the second was at
'Salvation Corner,' and the third at Dead End, on the Canal bank. There
was a Y.M.C.A. at Wells Cross Roads, another at St. Jean and Wiel, and
a sixth at Potyze Chateau. The seventh had a homely ring about it, for
it was situated at 'Oxford Circus,' the eighth was at St. Julien, the
ninth at Lille Gate (Ypres), and the tenth was the cellar Y.M.C.A. at
the corner of Lille Road referred to above. For many months it was the
centre of the social life of the stricken town, but in August 1917 it
received a direct hit from an enemy shell, and was knocked in. This
dug-out work is intensely interesting, though naturally it has its
limitations. Large me