ke
"as quicksilver is to grasp," he revenged himself by destroying its
best-beloved treasures. He must have rejoiced that July day of 1915,
when Wolff's Agency was able to announce at last, that the Abbey of St.
Waast and its museum were in flames!

As the gray car bumped on to Bethune, Vimy Ridge floated blue in the far
distance, to the right of the road, and Father Beckett and Brian took
off their hats to it. Still farther away, and out of sight lay Lens, in
German possession, but practically encircled by the British. The Old
Contemptible had been there, and described the town as having scarcely a
roof left, but being an "ant heap" of Boches, who swarm in underground
shelters bristling with machine guns. Between Lens and the road stood
the celebrated Colonne de Conde, showing where the prince won his great
victory over Spain; and farther on, within gun-sound distance though out
of sight, lay Loos, on the Canal de l'Haute Deule. Who thinks nowadays
of its powerful Cistercian Abbey, that dominated the country round? Who
thinks twice, when travelling this Appian Way which Germany has given
France, of any history which began or ended before the year 1914?

Bethune they found still existing as a town. It has been bombarded often
but not utterly destroyed, and from there they ran out four miles to
Festubert, because the little that the Germans have left of the
thirteenth-century church and village, burns with an eternal flame of
interest.

Bethune itself was a famous fortress once, full of history and legend:
but isn't the whole country in its waste and ruin, like a torn historic
banner, crusted with jewels--magic jewels, which cannot be stolen by
enemy hands?

On the way to Ypres--crown and climax of the tour--the car passed
Lillers and Hazebrouck, places never to be forgotten by hearts that beat
in the battles of Flanders. Then came the frontier at Steenwoorde; and
they were actually in Belgium, passing Poperinghe to Ypres, the most
famous British battleground of the war.

When Brian was fighting, and when you were on earth, Padre, everyone
talked about the "Ypres Salient." Now, though for soldiers Ypres will
always be the "salient" since the battle of Wytschaete Ridge, the
_material_ salient has vanished. Yet the same trenches exist, in the
same gray waste which Brian used to paint in those haunting,
impressionist war sketches of his that all London talked about, after
the Regent Street exhibition that he didn't ev