s in the Grande Place, and if
the station is a battered wreck where the rails are bent and twisted as
bits of wire? We do not mourn for Ypres, for it is a thousand times
grander in its downfall than it was ever in the days of its splendour.

In the town, the houses are but piles of stone, the streets are but
pitted stretches of desolation, the whole place is one huge monument to
the memory of those who have suffered, simply and grandly, for a great
cause. Round the town run the green ramparts where, a few years ago, the
townspeople would stroll of an evening, where the blonde Flemish girls
would glance shyly and covertly at the menfolk. The ramparts now are
torn, the poplars are broken, the moat is foul and sullied, and facing
out over the wide plain are rows of little crosses that mark the
resting-places of the dead.

For herein lies thy glory, Ypres. To capture thee there have fallen
thousands of the German invaders; in thy defence there have died
Belgians and French and English, Canadians and Indians and Algerians.
Three miles away, on Hill 60, are the bodies of hundreds of men who have
fought for thee--the Cockney buried close to the Scotchman, the Prussian
lying within a yard of the Prussian who fell there a year before, and
along the Cutting are French bayonets and rifles, and an occasional
unfinished letter from some long-dead _poilu_ to his lover in the sunny
plains of the Midi or the orchards of Normandy.

And all these men have died to save thee, Ypres. Why, then, should we
mourn for thee in thy ruin? Even thy great sister, Verdun, cannot boast
so proud a record as thine.

But the awful tragedy of it all! That the famous old town, quietly
asleep in its plain, should be shattered and ruined; that so many hopes
and ambitions can be blasted in so few hours; that young bodies can be
crushed, in a fraction of a second, to masses of lifeless, bleeding
pulp! The glorious tragedy of Ypres will never be written, for so many
who could have spoken are dead, and so many who live will never
speak--you can but guess their stories from the dull pain in their
eyes, and from the lips that they close tightly to stop the sobs.

God, how they have suffered, these Belgians! Day after day for over a
year the inhabitants of Ypres lived in the hell of war; day after day
they crouched in their cellars and wondered if it would be their little
home that would be ruined by the next shell. How many lived for months
in poky little bas