For herein lies thy glory, Ypres. To capture thee there have fallen thousands of the German invaders; in thy defence there have died Belgians and French and English, Canadians and Indians and Algerians. Three miles away, on Hill 60, are the bodies of hundreds of men who have fought for thee—the Cockney buried close to the Scotchman, the Prussian lying within a yard of the Prussian who fell there a year before, and along the Cutting are French bayonets and rifles, and an occasional unfinished letter from some long-dead poilu to his lover in the sunny plains of the Midi or the orchards of Normandy.

And all these men have died to save thee, Ypres. Why, then, should we mourn for thee in thy ruin? Even thy great sister, Verdun, cannot boast so proud a record as thine.

But the awful tragedy of it all! That the famous old town, quietly asleep in its plain, should be shattered and ruined; that so many hopes and ambitions can be blasted in so few hours; that young bodies can be crushed, in a fraction of a second, to masses of lifeless, bleeding pulp! The glorious tragedy of Ypres will never be written, for so many who could have spoken are dead, and so many who live will never speak—you can but guess their stories from the dull pain in their eyes, and from the lips that they close tightly to stop the sobs.

God, how they have suffered, these Belgians! Day after day for over a year the inhabitants of Ypres lived in the hell of war; day after day they crouched in their cellars and wondered if it would be their little home that would be ruined by the next shell. How many lived for months in poky little basements, or crowded together in the one room that was left of their home—anything, even death, rather than leave the place where they were born and where they had passed all their quiet, happy years.

I knew one woman who lived with her little daughter near the Porte de Menin, and one day, when the next cottage to hers had been blown to bits, I tried to persuade her to leave. For a long time she shook her head, and then she took me to show me her bedroom—such a poor little bedroom, with a crucifix hanging over the bed and a dingy rosebush growing up outside the window. "It was here that my husband died, five years ago," she said. "He would not like me to go away and leave the house to strangers."

"But think of the little one," I pleaded. "She is only a girl of five, and you cannot endanger her life like this."

For a long time she was silent, and a tear crept down her cheek as she tried to decide. "I will go, monsieur," she said at last, "for the sake of the little one."

And that night she set off into the unknown, fearful to look back at her little home lest her courage should desert her. She was dressed in her best clothes—for why leave anything of value for the Germans, should they ever come?—and she wheeled her few household treasures before her in the perambulator, while her little daughter ran beside her.

But next morning I saw her again coming back up the street to her cottage. This time she was alone, and she still trundled the perambulator in front of her.

I went out, and knocked at her door. "So you have come back," I said. "And where have you left the little one?"