“It’s generally pretty lively here,” said our Intelligence Officer, as I leaned forward to pass him the matches. “We’re going to speed up a bit—road’s a bit bumpy, so hold on.” Guns were roaring near and far, and in the air above was the long, sighing drone of shells as we raced forward, bumping and swaying over the uneven surface faster and faster, until, skidding round a rather awkward corner, we saw before us a low-lying, jagged outline of broken walls, shattered towers and a tangle of broken roof-beams—all that remains of the famous old town of Ypres. And over this devastation shells moaned distressfully, and all around unseen guns barked and roared. So, amidst this pandemonium our car lurched into shattered “Wipers”, past the dismantled water-tower, uprooted from its foundations and leaning at a more acute angle than will ever the celebrated tower of Pisa, past ugly heaps of brick and rubble—the ruins of once fair buildings, on and on until we pulled up suddenly before a huge something, shattered and formless, a long façade of broken arches and columns, great roof gone, mighty walls splintered, cracked and rent—all that “Kultur” has left of the ancient and once beautiful Cloth Hall.
“Roof’s gone since I was here last,” said the Intelligence Officer, “come this way. You’ll see it better from over here.” So we followed him and stood to look upon the indescribable ruin.
“There are no words to describe—that,” said N. at last, gloomily.
“No,” I answered. “Arras was bad enough, but this—!”
“Arras?” he repeated. “Arras is only a ruined town. Ypres is a rubbish dump. And its Cloth Hall is—a bad dream.” And he turned away. Our Intelligence Officer led us over mounds of fallen masonry and débris of all sorts, and presently halted us amid a ruin of splintered columns, groined arch and massive walls, and pointed to a heap of rubbish he said was the altar.
“This is the Church St. Jean,” he explained, “begun, I think, in the eleventh or twelfth century and completed somewhere about 1320—”
“And,” said N., “finally finished and completely done for by ‘Kultur’ in the twentieth century, otherwise I guess it would have lasted until the 220th century—look at the thickness of the walls.”
“And after all these years of civilisation,” said I.
“Civilisation,” he snorted, turning over a fragment of exquisitely carved moulding with the toe of his muddy boot, “civilisation has done a whole lot, don’t forget—changed the system of plumbing and taught us how to make high explosives and poison gas.”
Gloomily enough we wandered on together over rubbish piles and mountains of fallen brickwork, through shattered walls, past unlovely stumps of mason-work that had been stately tower or belfry once, beneath splintered arches that led but from one scene of ruin to another, and ever our gloom deepened, for it seemed that Ypres, the old Ypres, with all its monuments of mediæval splendour, its noble traditions of hard-won freedom, its beauty and glory, was passed away and gone for ever.