th and thirteenth centuries.

The Cloth Hall, begun by Count Baldwin IX of Flanders, was perhaps the
best preserved and oldest specimen of its kind in the Netherlands, and
was practically complete up to the middle of August, 1915, when the
great guns of the iconoclastic invader shot away the top of the immense
clock tower, and unroofed the entire structure. Its facade was nearly
five hundred feet long, of most severe and simple lines, and presented a
double row of ogival windows, surmounted by niches containing thirty-one
finely executed statues of counts and countesses of Flanders. There were
small, graceful turrets at each end, and a lofty belfry some two hundred
and thirty feet in height in the center, containing a fine set of bells
connected with the mechanism of a carillon.

[Illustration: No. 4, Rue de Dixmude: Ypres]

The interior of the hall was of noble proportions, running the full
length, its walls decorated by a series of paintings by two modern
Flemish painters, which were not of the highest merit, yet good withal.
At the market-place end was a highly ornate structure called the New
Work (Nieuwerke), erected by the burghers as a guild-hall in the
fifteenth century. This was the first part of the edifice to be ruined
by a German shell.

The destruction of this exquisite work of art seems entirely wanton and
unnecessary. It produced no result whatever of advantage. There were
neither English, French, nor Belgian soldiers in Ypres at the time. The
populace consisted of about ten thousand peaceful peasants and
shopkeepers, who, trusting in the fact that the town was unarmed and
unfortified, remained in their homes. The town was battered and
destroyed, leveled in ashes. The bombardment destroyed also the great
Cathedral of Saint Martin adjoining the Cloth Hall, which dated from the
thirteenth century [although the tower was not added until the fifteenth
century]. It formed a very fine specimen of late Gothic, the interior
containing some fine oak carving and a richly carved and decorated organ
loft. Bishop Jansenius, the founder of the sect of Jansenists, is buried
in a Gothic cloister which formed a part of the older church that
occupied the site.

Another interesting monument of past greatness was the Hotel de Ville,
erected in the sixteenth century, and containing a large collection of
modern paintings by French and Belgian artists. Of this structure not a
trace remains save a vast blackened pile of crum