As a machine of pure destruction the Kaiser's army is unique. I doubt whether any other army in the history of the world has had the knack of laying waste a whole country so completely. They wipe out everything.
These towns and villages play no part in the defence of the Yser. They are merely shell-traps, where no general would think of placing his men.
As a revenge on an innocent civil population, who thus lose their hearths and homes, and are now refugees all over France, Holland, and England, the plan succeeds admirably. On the other hand, the defence is materially aided, because the fire is taken off the troops in the trenches and on the long trains making their way to the front with food, ammunition, and supplies of all kinds. I do not believe the line of the Yser could have been held had the Germans scientifically supported their infantry attacks with this tremendous volume of shell fire, with which they have laid low Dixmude, Pervyse, Nieuport, and fifty other smaller towns and villages.
The crowning act, however, of this "revenge," deliberately indulged in that the attention of the world might be drawn off the crushing disasters suffered by German arms, was the ruin of Ypres. That act of vandalism was not, it is necessary to remember, done during the battle or for any military purpose. It was begun after the battle, and when the issue, and with it the future history of Europe, had been for ever changed. Of what that ruin was there has been drawn by Mr. Luigi Barzini a picture of enduring reality. He was one of three civilians who visited Ypres while this bombardment was going on. His description appeared in the Daily Telegraph of December 2, 1914.
At a turn of the road, the town appeared in the distance—two mutilated campaniles, a ruin of massive towers, and the ancient belfry, with its vague bluish carvings. In the dull, declining day, the trees at the edge of the plain seemed like a dark mist. They formed, as it were, a sombre border of cloud on the horizon, and above the network of branches rose the remains of the bombarded town, pale and sinister, with something unreal and death-like in their mutilated aspect—phantasms of a massacred glory.
At short intervals the air was shaken by the bombardment, and, urged by the wind, two clouds of white smoke fled between the trees and vanished amidst their branches. Two flashes of livid light burst on high, and for an instant the top of the towers disappeared in a cloud. The destructive fury of the German guns still continued to strike the heart of Ypres. The road had been converted into a desert.
We had left behind us towns and villages crowded with troops, immense parks of carts and motor-lorries scattered over the meadows, extensive encampments at the edges of the road, in which the innumerable piles of arms seemed like black sheaves crowned with points, the general quarters of divisions and brigades denoted by standards. Then, having passed Vlamertynghe, about three miles from Ypres, we came upon the sinister solitude of a modern battle.
There was no other voice, no other sound, than the boom of cannon and the crash of shell. But the flashes of the explosions seemed to render all the more evident, more profound, and more significant the terrible silence of the town and the fields. It was the silence of resignation, fear, and agony. The sound of our footsteps upon the muddy pavement of the suburb echoed amidst the little houses—the first houses of Ypres.
Not one building remained intact. The hurricanes of steel had battered and penetrated them all.