Fuit Hupra! The ancient city has at last crumbled into dust; but if she is blotted out amongst the cities of Belgium, she will live for ever in the hearts and the history of Canada and the British Empire. She belongs--her halls and churches, her streets and houses, all her people and her past--henceforth to us and those who come after us. She is, spiritually, as much a part of the British Empire as Vancouver or Toronto. Her quaint memorials will be cherished by us; her story will be told by our children's children. She is a city of the dead--our British dead.
It is strange that it should be reserved for Ypres to play such a prominent part on the stage of this war. For the city was itself but a symbol of a past greatness and a melancholy survivor of centuries-old tragedy. No town of its size in Europe--no town of ten times its size--has suffered more.
During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Ypres was the metropolis of Flanders, taking the lead of Bruges and Ghent. In 1267, in a petition to Pope Innocent IV., the aldermen estimated the population at 200,000 souls. It possessed 4,000 looms, and counted seven parish churches. Then was built the vast and splendid Drapers' Guild Hall, the most remarkable secular monument of the Middle Ages. Merchants from all over Europe had counting-houses within its territory. The Kings of France and England and the Emperors of Germany granted special privileges to the men of Ypres who came to trade in their realms.
Then came ruinous and bloody wars against the Counts of Flanders and against the Kings of France; came civil dissensions, riots, and massacres. After being besieged by English troops under Richard II. in 1383, the town found its suburbs destroyed, and its industrial population terribly depleted by exile. In the following century it was visited by repeated misfortunes, and in the sixteenth it became the scene of religious persecution, massacres, and pillage. In 1566 Ypres was sacked by a mob, and the same fate befell it in 1578. It was used as a fortress against the Spaniards, and when it fell, after a siege of eight months, the population had dwindled to 5,000 souls, and within its walls all was in ruins. Sieges and bombardments continued at intervals until, at the French Revolution, Ypres fell into the hands of the troops of the Convention, and once more--"for the last time," says the local historian--became a victim of violence and destruction. Alas, not the last!
Briefly, that is the tale of Ypres, relentlessly pursued by misfortune. And yet, despite all the city has endured, it fronted the world bravely and even with an imposing aspect, repairing the ravages of war with patience and fortitude.
This time is it possible that this noble city should rise again? Its pride--the glorious Guild Hall--the mediæval churches and mansions are all but level with the ground. There is scarce a single house in the city whose walls are undamaged, and most of them are mere heaps of bricks and mortar.
I have just made a tour of the streets, accompanied by a young Canadian engineer. It is a desert whose silence is only broken by the thunder of guns, for the Germans are bombarding again. Occasionally a 4.5 shell crashes perilously near, or a shrapnel explodes over our heads, and instinctively we dart into cover. But for these reminders of a savage and felon present we might be walking in a city buried like Pompeii or Herculaneum, and now exhumed to display to curious eyes the crumbling memorials of a remote and peaceful past.
My companion reminds me, as we pass the convent of the Irish Nuns of Ypres, that the Princess Patricia's carried their colours through Ypres, and that while they halted here one of their officers quoted some lines of the famous ballad:
In the cloisters of Ypres a banner is swaying,
And by it a pale, weeping maiden is praying.
There have been, in dreams, many pale, weeping maidens praying beside that banner wrought by the royal Princess Patricia. God grant soon that the prayers of all women be heard!