Sun., Dec. 13.—Rifle contest.
It must be confessed that this programme is somewhat monotonous, but in the larger towns it is considerably amplified and varied. Still to one who was brought up in a small country village in New Hampshire it seems very good, both as an evidence of the popular desire for healthy and rational out-door enjoyment, and of the disposition of the Government to promote and foster legitimate amusements of all kinds. The kermesse is an European rather than a Belgian institution and requires no description further than that it is a jolly good time for everybody. It has existed in Flanders and throughout the Walloon provinces from time immemorial, as ancient paintings and still more ancient historical references conclusively show. Its most interesting feature to the American visitor is the night dancing out of doors on the rough cobble-stones of the town square or on the soft grass of the village green. Lighted by flaring gas torches, or sometimes only by the moon and such stray beams as fall on the dancers from the open doors and windows of adjacent cafés, the spectacle of the gaily dancing couples carries the observer back to the days when the world was young, and love and laughter and happiness reigned supreme.
AN ANCIENT PAINTING OF THE FLEMISH KERMESSE, BY TENIERS.
[CHAPTER VII]
WHEN YPRES WAS A GREATER CITY THAN LONDON
As we returned from our trip to Dixmude, Furnes and Nieuport, the Professor announced that our next destination would be Ypres. If he had said that it would he Chingwangtao, or the Comoro Archipelago, the ladies could hardly have stared at him more blankly. They had never heard of it. Since October the whole world has heard of it, and the name of the all but forgotten old town is familiar to every schoolboy—and will continue so for generations to come. The record of our visit that follows was written amid the pleasant and peaceful scenes that it describes. When we were there the swans were swimming majestically in the waters of the moat that still surrounded the remnants of the old city walls, but we were told that for military purposes all this was obsolete. No doubt it was, but the brave old town was none the less able—with the help of its stubborn English defenders—to withstand the most furious, determined and bloody assaults in all history. To the German host the mediæval term la morte d’Ypres was revived in those awful weeks of October and November, 1914, for the grim, low-lying ramparts of the town meant death to countless thousands.
Whether anything whatever is still standing of the old structures described in this chapter it is at present impossible to say. The British trenches were under a well-nigh continuous storm of shells for many weeks, and the town itself must undoubtedly have suffered severely. Late in November it was reported that the old Cloth Hall had been destroyed by the furious German bombardment, or, at least, severely injured. The account of the various points of interest in the famous old town as they appeared in peaceful June—together with some brief sketches of its former greatness—may be all the more interesting now that its ruins lie in the lime-light of the world’s attention. As compared with the half-dozen tourists that averaged to visit Ypres each day before the war the return of peace will see it become the Mecca for daily thousands. To these the remains of the town itself should vie in interest with the trenches of the famous battle-fields of the Great War, for during a period two or three times as long as the entire duration of the nation known as the United States of America, Ypres was one of the greatest and richest cities in the world.