reat
masses of masonry from the walls. But they shelled it in vain, and as I
left Ypres in the twilight, when the thunder of the guns had ceased, and
looked back on the great mound of "the city that was," I saw above the
ruins the finger still pointing heavenward.

But if the solitude of Ypres is memorable, the silence is terrible. It is
the silence of imminent and breathless things, full of strange secrets,
thrilling with a fearful expectation, broken by sudden and shattering
voices that speak and then are still--voices that seem to come out of the
bowels of the earth near at hand and are answered by voices more distant,
the vicious hiss of the shrapnel, the crisp rattle of the machine-guns, the
roar of "Mother," that sounds like an invisible express train thundering
through the sky above you. The solitude and the silence assume an
oppressive significance. They are only the garment of the mighty mystery
that envelops you. You feel that these dead walls have ears, eyes, and most
potent voices, that you are not in the midst of a great loneliness, but
that all around the earth is full of most tremendous secrets. And then you
realise that the city that is as dead as Nineveh to the outward eye is the
most vital city in the world.

One day it will rise from its ashes, its streets will resound once more
with jest and laughter, its fires will be relit, and its chimneys will send
forth the cheerful smoke. But its glory throughout all the ages will be the
memory of the days when it stood a mound of ruins on the plain with its
finger pointing in mute appeal to heaven against the infamies of men.

ON PLEASANT SOUNDS

The wind had dropped, and on the hillside one seemed to be in a vast and
soundless universe. Far down in the valley a few lights glimmered in the
general darkness, but apart from these one might have fancied oneself alone
in all the world. Then from some remote farmstead there came the sound of a
dog barking. It rang through the night like the distant shout of a friend.
It seemed to fill the whole arch of heaven with its reverberations and to
flood the valley with the sense of companionship. It brought me news from
the farm. The day's tasks were over, the cattle were settled for the night,
the household were at their evening meal, and the watch-dog had resumed his
nocturnal charge. His bark seemed to have in it the music of immemorial
things--of labour and rest, and all the cheerful routine and comradeship o