FOOTNOTES:

[25] The soldier's contemptuous expression for the inhabitants of the
civilian world.

[26] I retired with some haste from Flanders the night after the Germans
first began to use gas. Militant chemistry may have altered the British
soldier's convictions.

[27] I have left out the usual monotonous epithet. Any soldier can
supply it.

[28] To these may now be added--St Eloi, Hill 60, the Second Battle of
Ypres.

CHAPTER XII.

BEHIND THE LINES.

I had intended to write down a full description of the country
immediately behind our present line. The Skipper, for fear we should
become stale, allowed us plenty of leave. We would make little
expeditions to Bethune for the baths, spend an afternoon riding round
Armentieres, or run over to Poperinghe for a chop. We even arranged for
a visit to the Belgian lines, but that excursion was forbidden by a new
order. Right through the winter we had "unrivalled opportunities"--as
the journalists would say--of becoming intimate with that strip of
Flanders which extends from Ypres to Bethune. Whether I can or may
describe it is a matter for care. A too affectionate description of the
neighbourhood of Wulverghem, for instance, would be unwise. But I see no
reason why I should not state as a fact that a most excellent dry
Martini could be obtained in Ypres up to the evening of April 22.

Wretched Ypres has been badly over-written. Before the war it was a
pleasant city, little visited by travellers because it lay on a badly
served branch line. The inhabitants tell me it was never much troubled
with tourists. One burgher explained the situation to me with a comical
mixture of sentiment and reason.

"You see, sir, that our Cathedral is shattered and the Cloth Hall a
ruin. May those devils, the dirty Germans, roast in Hell! But after the
war we shall be the richest city in Belgium. All England will flock to
Ypres. Is it not a monstrous cemetery? Are there not woods and villages
and farms at which the brave English have fought like lions to earn for
themselves eternal fame, and for the city an added glory? The good God
gives His compensations after great wars. There will be many to buy our
lace and fill our restaurants."

Mr John Buchan and Mr Valentine Williams and others have "written up"
Ypres. The exact state of the Cloth Hall at any given moment is the
object of solicitude. The shattered Belgian homes have been described
over and over again. The importan