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OVER THERE 
 
 ARNOLD BENNETT 
 
By ARNOLD BENNETT 
 
 NOVELS 
 
 THESE TWAIN 
 
 CLAYHANGER 
 
 HILDA LESSWAYS 
 
 THE OLD wives' TALE 
 
 DENRY THE AUDACIOUS 
 
 THE OLD ADAM 
 
 HELEN WITH THE HIGH HAND 
 
 THE MATADOR OF THE FIVE TOWNS 
 
 THE BOOK OF CARLOTTA 
 
 BURIED ALIVE 
 
 A GREAT MAN 
 
 LEONORA 
 
 WHOM GOD HATH JOINED 
 
 A MAN FROM THE NORTH 
 
 ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS 
 
 THE GLIMPSE 
 
 THE CITY OF PLEASURE 
 
 THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL 
 
 HUGO 
 
 THE GATES OF WRATH 
 
 POCKET PHILOSOPHIES 
 
 THE author's CRAFT 
 
 MARRIED LIFE 
 
 FRIENDSHIP AND HAPPINESS 
 
 HOW TO LIVE ON 24 HOURS A DAY 
 
 THE HUMAN MACHINE 
 
 LITERARY TASTE 
 
 MENTAL EFFICIENCY 
 
 PLAYS 
 
 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 
 CUPID AND COMMONSENSE 
 WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTS 
 POLITE FARCES 
 MILESTONES 
 THE HONEYMOON 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 paris nights 
 
 the truth about an authoit 
 
 liberty! 
 
 OVER there: war SCENES 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 NEW YORK 
 

 BOMBARDMENT OF RHEIMS CATHEDRAL 
 
 "But the Cathedral stands, high above the level of 
 disaster, a unique target, and a target successfully 
 defiant." [Page 68] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 War Scenes On The 
 Western Front 
 
 BY 
 
 ARNOLD BENNETT 
 
 ACTHOE OF "PARIS NIGHTS," "THE OLD WIVES' TALE," ETC. 
 
 WITH DRAWINGS BY WALTEE HALE 
 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 NEW YORK 
 
y 
 
 5aA 
 
 3^ 
 
 Copyright, 1915, by 
 The Curtis Publishing Company 
 
 Copyright, 1915, oy 
 George H. Doran Company 
 
 V^ 
 
 NOV 15 1915 
 
 ©CU414595 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Zone of Pakis 3 
 
 II. On the French Front 33 
 
 III. E-uiNS 63 
 
 IV. At Grips 95 
 
 V. The British Lines 123 
 
 VI. The Unique City 155 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 BoMBAEDMENT OF Rheims Cathedhal . FroTitispiece 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Church at Bethany 20 
 
 The Ruined Nave of Soissons Cathedral. . 50 
 
 Interior of Arras Cathedral Bombarded 
 
 AND on Fire 80 
 
 Ruins of the Hotel de Ville, Arras 110 
 
 Shell Fire over Ablain St. Nazaire 140 
 
 The Tower of the Cloth Hall, Ypres 170 
 
CHAPTER ONE 
 THE ZONE OF PARIS 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ZONE OF PARIS 
 
 From the balcony you look down upon 
 massed and variegated tree-tops as though 
 
 you were looking down upon a 
 THE valley forest from a mountain 
 ESCAPE height. Those trees, whose hidden 
 
 trunks make alleys and squares, 
 are rooted in the history of France. On 
 the dusty gravel of the promenade which 
 runs between the garden and the street a 
 very young man and a girl, tiny figures, are 
 playing with rackets at one of those second- 
 rate ball games beloved by the French petite 
 bourgeoisie. Their jackets and hats are hung 
 on the corner of the fancy wooden case in 
 which an orange-tree is planted. They are 
 certainly perspiring in the heavy heat of the 
 early morning. They are also certainly in 
 love. This lively daUiance is the preliminary 
 to a day's desk-work. It seems ill-chosen, 
 silly, futile. The couple have forgotten, if 
 they ever knew, that they are playing at a 
 
 [3] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 terrific and long-drawn moment of crisis in 
 a spot sacred to the finest civilisation. 
 
 From the balcony you can see, close by, 
 the Louvre, with its sculptures extending 
 from Jean Goujon to Carpeaux; the Church 
 of St. Clotilde, where Cesar Franck for 
 forty years hid his genius away from popu- 
 larity; the railway station of the Quai 
 d'Orsay, which first proved that a terminus 
 may excite sensations as fine as those ex- 
 cited by a palace or a temple; the dome of 
 the Invalides; the unique fa9ades, equal to 
 any architecture of modern times, to the 
 north of the Place de la Concorde, where the 
 Ministry of Marine has its home. Nobody 
 who knows Paris, and understands what 
 Paris has meant and still means to humanity, 
 can regard the scene without the most ex- 
 quisite sentiments of humility, affection, and 
 gratitude. It is impossible to look at the 
 plinths, the mouldings, the carving of the 
 Ministry of Marine and not be thrilled by 
 that supreme expression of national art. . . . 
 
 And all this escaped! That is the feeling 
 which one has. All this beauty was menaced 
 
 [4] 
 
THE ZONE OF PARIS 
 
 with disaster at the hands of beings who 
 comprehended it even less than the simple 
 couple playing ball, beings who have scarcely 
 reached the beginnings of comprehension, 
 and who joined a barbaric ingenuousness to 
 a savage cruelty. It was menaced, but it 
 escaped. Perhaps no city was ever in acuter 
 peril; it escaped by a miracle, but it did 
 escape. It escaped because tens of thou- 
 sands of soldiers in thousands of taxi-cabs 
 advanced more rapidly than any soldiers 
 could be expected to advance. 
 
 "The population of Paris has revolted 
 and is hurrying to ask mercy from us!" 
 thought the reconnoitring simpletons in 
 Taubes, when they noted beneath them the 
 incredible processions of taxi-cabs going 
 north. But what they saw was the Sixth 
 Army, whose movement changed the cam- 
 paign, and perhaps the whole course of 
 history. 
 
 "A great misfortune has overtaken us," 
 said a German officer the next day. It was 
 true. Greater than he suspected. . . . 
 
 The horror of what might have happened, 
 
 [5] 
 
OVER THEEE 
 
 the splendour of what did happen, mingle in 
 the awed mind as you look over the city 
 from the balcony. The city escaped. And 
 the event seems vaster and more sublime 
 than the mind can bear. 
 
 The streets of Paris have now a perpetual 
 aspect of Sunday morning; only the sound 
 of church-bells is lacking. A few of the 
 taxi-cabs have come back; but all the auto- 
 buses without exception are away behind 
 the front. So that the traffic is forced 
 underground, where the railways are manned 
 by women. A horse-bus, dug up out of the 
 past, jogs along the most famous boulevard 
 in the world like a country diligence, with 
 a fat, laughing peasant-woman clinging to 
 its back-step and collecting fare-moneys into 
 the immense pocket of her black apron. 
 Many of the most expensive and unneces- 
 sary shops are shut; the others wait with 
 strange meekness for custom. But the pro- 
 vision shops and all the sturdy cheap shops 
 of the poor go on naturally, without any 
 self -consciousness, just as usual. The pave- 
 ments show chiefly soldiers in a wild, new 
 
 [6] 
 
THE ZONE OF PARIS 
 
 variety of uniforms, from pale blue to black, 
 imitated and adapted from all sources, and 
 especially from England — and widows and 
 orphans. The number of young girls and 
 women in mourning, in the heavy mourning 
 affected by the Latin race, is enormous. 
 This crape is the sole casualty list permitted 
 by the French War Office. It suffices. 
 Supreme grief is omnipresent ; but it is calm, 
 cheerful, smihng. Widows glance at each 
 other with understanding, hke initiates of a 
 secret and powerful society. . . . 
 
 Never was Paris so disconcertingly odd. 
 And yet never was it more profoundly itself. 
 Between the slow realisation of a monstrous 
 peril escaped and the equally slow realisa- 
 tion of its power to punish, the French 
 spirit, angered and cold, knows at last what 
 the French spirit is. And to watch and 
 share its mood is positively ennobling to the 
 stranger. Paris is revealed under an en- 
 chantment. On the surface of the enchant- 
 ment the pettinesses of daily existence per- 
 sist queerly. 
 
 [7] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 Two small rooms and a kitchen on a sixth 
 floor. You could put the kitchen, of which 
 the cooking apparatus consists 
 SOME of two gas-rings, easily into the 
 
 PARISIAN box that holds the roots of the 
 INTERIORS orange-tree in the Tuileries gar- 
 dens. Everything is plain, and 
 stringently tidy ; everything is a special item, 
 separately acquired, treasured. I see again 
 a water-colour that I did years ago and had 
 forgotten; it lives, protected by a glazed 
 frame and by the pride of possession. The 
 solitary mistress of this immaculate home is 
 a spinster sempstress in the thirties. She 
 earns three francs a day, and is rich because 
 she does not spend it all, and has never spent 
 it all. Inexpressibly neat, smiling, philo- 
 sophic, helpful, she has within her a conten- 
 tious and formidable tiger which two con- 
 tingencies, and two only, will arouse. The 
 first contingency springs from any threat 
 of marriage. You must not seek a husband 
 for her: she is alone in the world, and she 
 wants to be. The second springs from any 
 attempt to alter her habits, which in her 
 
 [8] 
 
THE ZONE OF PARIS 
 
 sight are as sacredly immutable as the ritual 
 of an Asiatic pagoda. 
 
 Last summer she went to a small town, to 
 which is attached a very large military 
 camp, to help her sister-in-law in the running" 
 of a cafe. The excursion was to be partly 
 in the nature of a hohday ; but, indefatigable 
 on a chair with a needle, she could not stand 
 for hours on her feet, ministering to a sex 
 of which she knew almost nothing. She had 
 the nostalgia of the Parisian garret. She 
 must go home to her neglected habits. The 
 war was waging. She delayed, from a sense 
 of duty. But at last her habits were irre- 
 sistible. Officers had said lightly that there 
 was no danger, that the Germans could not 
 possibly reach that small town. Neverthe- 
 less, the train that the spinster-sempstress 
 took was the last train to leave. And as the 
 spinster-sempstress departed by the train, so 
 the sister-in-law departed in a pony-cart, 
 with a son and a grandmother in the pony- 
 cart, together with such goods as the cart 
 would hold; and, through staggering adven- 
 tures, reached safety at Troyes. 
 
 [9] 
 
OYER THERE 
 
 "And how did you yourself get on?" I 
 asked the spinster-sempstress. 
 
 She answered: 
 
 "It was terrible. Ordinarily it is a jour- 
 ney of three or four hours. But that time it 
 lasted three days and two nights. The train 
 was crammed with refugees and with 
 wounded. One was obliged to stand up. 
 One could not move." 
 
 "But where did you sleep?" 
 
 "I did not sleep. Do I not tell you one 
 was obliged to stand up ? I stood up all the 
 first night. The floor was thirty centimetres 
 deep in filth. The second night one had 
 settled down somewhat. I could sit." 
 
 "But about eating?" 
 
 "I had a little food that I brought with 
 
 me." 
 
 "And drinking?" 
 
 "Nothing, till the second day. One could 
 not move. But in the end we arrived. I 
 was broken with fatigue. I was very ill. 
 But I was at home. . . . The Boches drank 
 everything in the cafe, everything; but the 
 building was spared — ^it stood away from the 
 
 [10] 
 
THE ZONE OF PARIS 
 
 firing. . . . How long do you think the war 
 will last?" 
 
 "I'm beginning to think it will last a long 
 
 time." 
 
 "So they say," she murmured, glancing 
 through the window at the prospect of roofs 
 and chimney-cowls. ". . . Provided that it 
 finishes well ..." 
 
 Except by the look in her eyes, and by 
 the destruction of her once good complexion, 
 it was impossible to divine that this woman's 
 habits had ever been disturbed in the 
 shghtest detail. But the gaze and the com- 
 plexion told the tale. 
 
 Next: the Boulevard St. Germain. A 
 majestic flat, heavily and sombrely fur- 
 nished. The great drawing-room is shut 
 and sheeted with holland. It has been shut 
 for twenty years. The mistress of this home 
 is an aged widow of inflexible will and as- 
 tounding activity. She gets up at five a. m., 
 and no cook has ever yet satisfied her. The 
 master is her son, a bachelor of fifty. He is 
 paralysed, and, always perfectly dressed in 
 
 [11] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 the English taste, he passes his Ufe in a 
 wheeled chair. The home is centred in his 
 study, full of books, engravings, a large safe, 
 telephone, theatrophone, newspapers, cigar- 
 ettes, easy-chairs. When I go in, an old 
 friend, a stockbroker, is there, and "thees" 
 and "thous" abound in the conversation, 
 which runs on investments, the new English 
 loan, banking accounts in London, the rent 
 moratorium in Paris, and the war. It is 
 said that every German is a critic of war. 
 But so is every Frenchman a critic of war. 
 The criticism I now hear is the best spoken 
 criticism, utterly impartial, that I have 
 heard. 
 
 "In sum," says the grey-headed stock- 
 broker, "there disengages itself from the 
 totahty of the facts an impression, tolerably 
 clear, that all goes very well on the West 
 front." 
 
 Which is reassuring. But the old lad}^, 
 invincible after seven-and-a-half decades 
 spent in the hard acquirement of wisdom, 
 will not be reassured. She is not alarmed, 
 but she will not be reassured. She treats the 
 
 [12] 
 
THE ZONE OF PAEIS 
 
 two men with affectionate malice as chil- 
 dren. She knows that "those birds" — that 
 is to say, the Germans — will never be beaten, 
 because they are for ever capable of invent- 
 ing some new trick. 
 
 She will not sit still. A bit of talk, and she 
 runs off with the agihty of a girl to survey 
 her household; then returns and cuts into 
 the discussion. 
 
 "If you are coming to lunch, Eennett," 
 she says, "come before Monday, because on 
 Monday my cook takes herself away, and as 
 for the new one, I should dare to say noth- 
 ing. . . . You don't know, Bennett, you 
 don't know, that at a given moment it was 
 impossible to buy salt. I mean, they sold it 
 to you unwillingly, in little screws of paper. 
 It was impossible to get enough. Figure 
 that to yourself, you from London ! As for 
 chicory for the morning cafe-au-laitj it ex- 
 isted not. Gold could not buy it." 
 
 And again she said, speaking of the fear- 
 ful days in September: 
 
 "What would you? We waited. My little 
 coco is nailed there. He cannot move with- 
 
 [13] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 out a furniture-van filled with things essen- 
 tial to his existence. I did not wish to move. 
 We waited, quite simply. We waited for 
 them to come. They did not come. So 
 much the better. That is all." 
 
 I have never encountered anything more 
 radically French than the temperament of 
 this aged woman. 
 
 Next: the luxury quarter — ^the establish- 
 ment of one of those fashionable dressmakers 
 whom you patronise, and whose bills startle 
 all save the most hardened. She is a very 
 handsome woman. She has a husband and 
 two little boys. They are all there. The 
 husband is a retired professional soldier. He 
 has a small and easy post in a civil adminis- 
 tration, but his real work is to keep his wife's 
 books. In August he was re-engaged, and 
 ready to lead soldiers under fire in the forti- 
 fied camp which Gallieni has evolved out of 
 the environs of Paris; but the need passed, 
 and the uniform was laid aside. The two 
 little boys are combed and dressed as only 
 French and American children are combed 
 
 [14] 
 
THE ZONE OF PARIS 
 
 and dressed, and with a more economical 
 ingenuity than American children. Each 
 has a beautiful purple silk necktie and a 
 beautiful purple silk handkerchief to match. 
 You may notice that the purple silk is ex- 
 actly the same purple silk as the lining of 
 their mother's rich mantle hanging over a 
 chair-back. 
 
 "I had to dismiss my last few workgirls 
 on Saturday/' said the dressmaker. "It was 
 no longer possible to keep them. I had 
 seventy, you know. ISTow — not one. For 
 a time we made considerably less than the 
 rent. ISTow we make nothing. Neverthe- 
 less, some American clients have been very 
 kind." 
 
 Her glance went round the empty white 
 salons with their mirrors in sculptured 
 frames. Naught of her stock was left except 
 one or two fragile blouses and a few original 
 drawings. 
 
 Said the husband: 
 
 "We are eating our resources. I will tell 
 you what this war means to us. It means 
 that we shall have to work seven or eight 
 
 [15] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 years longer than we had the intention to 
 work. What would you?" 
 
 He lifted his arms and lowered the cor- 
 ners of his mouth. Then he turned again 
 to the military aspect of things, elaborating 
 it. 
 
 The soldier in him finished : 
 
 "It is necessary, all the same, to admire 
 these cursed Germans." 
 
 "Admire them!" said his wife sharply. "I 
 do not appreciate the necessity. When I 
 think of that day and that night we spent 
 at home !" They live in the eastern suburbs 
 of the city. "When I think of that day and 
 that night! The cannon thundering at a 
 distance of ten kilometres!" 
 
 "Thirty kilometres, almost thirty, my 
 friend," the husband corrected. 
 
 "Ten kilometres. I am sure it was not 
 more than ten kilometres, my friend." 
 
 "But see, my little one. It was at Meaux. 
 Forty kilometres to Meaux. We are at 
 thirteen. That makes twenty-seven, at least. 
 
 "It sounded like ten." 
 
 "That is true." 
 
 [16] 
 
THE ZONE OF PAEIS 
 
 "It sounded like ten, my dear Arnold. 
 All day, and all night. We could not go to 
 bed. Had one any desire to go to bed? It 
 was anguish. The mere souvenir is anguish." 
 
 She kissed her youngest boy, who had long 
 hair. 
 
 "Come, come!" the soldier calmed her. 
 
 Lastly: an interior dans le monde; a home 
 illustrious in Paris for the riches of its col- 
 lections — bric-a-brac, fans, porcelain, fur- 
 niture, modern pictures; the walls frescoed 
 by Pierre Bonnard and his compeers; a 
 black marble balcony with an incomparable 
 view in the very middle of the city. Here 
 several worlds encoimtered each other: 
 authors, painters, musicians, dilettanti, ad- 
 ministrators. The hostess had good-natur- 
 edly invited a high official of the Foreign 
 Office, whom I had not seen for many years; 
 she did not say so, but her aim therein was 
 to expedite the arrangements for my pil- 
 grimages in the war-zone. Sundry of my 
 old friends were present. It was wonderful 
 how many had escaped active service, either 
 
 [17] 
 
OYER THERE 
 
 because they were necessary to central ad- 
 ministration, or because they were neutrals, 
 or because they were too old, or because 
 they had been declined on account of phys- 
 ical unfitness, rejormes. One or two who 
 might have come failed to do so because 
 they had perished. 
 
 Amid the abounding, dazzling confusion 
 of objects which it was a duty to admire, 
 people talked cautiously of the war. With 
 tranquillity and exactness and finality the 
 high official, clad in pale alpaca and yellow 
 boots, explained the secret significance of 
 Yellow Books, White Books, Orange Books, 
 Blue Books. The ultimate issues were 
 never touched, New, yet unprinted, music 
 was played; Schumann, though German 
 enough, was played. Then literature came 
 to the top. A novelist wanted to know what 
 I thought of a book called "The Way of 
 All Flesh," which he had just read. It is 
 singular how that ruthless book makes its 
 way across all frontiers. He also wanted to 
 know about Gissing, a name new to him. 
 And then a voice from the obscurity of the 
 
 [18] 
 
THE ZONE 0:F PAKIS 
 
 balcony came startlingly to me in the music- 
 room: 
 
 "Tell me! Sincerely — do they hate the 
 Germans in England? Do they hate them, 
 veritably? Tell me. I doubt it. I doubt 
 strongly." 
 
 I laughed, rather awkwardly, as any Eng- 
 lishman would. 
 
 The transient episode was very detri- 
 mental to literary talk. 
 
 ■5^ Alfe ijt ^It ^L^ 
 
 Negotiations for a private visit to the 
 front languished. The thing was arranged 
 
 right enough, but it seemed 
 THE impossible to fix a day for 
 
 BATTLEFIELD actually starting. So I went 
 
 to Meaux. Meaux had stuck 
 in my ears. Meaux was in history and in 
 romances; it is in Dumas. It was burnt by 
 the INTormans in the tenth century, and ter- 
 rific massacres occurred outside its walls in 
 the fourteenth century, massacres in which 
 the English aristocracy took their full share 
 of the killing. Also, in the seventeenth 
 century, Bossuet was Bishop of Meaux. 
 
 [19] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 Finally, in the twentieth century, the Ger- 
 mans just got to Meaux, and they got no 
 further. It was, so far as I can make out, 
 the nearest point to Paris which they soiled. 
 
 I could not go even to Meaux without 
 formalities, but the formalities were simple. 
 The dilatory train took seventy minutes, 
 dawdling along the banks of the notorious 
 Marne. In an automobile one could have 
 done the journey in half the time. An auto- 
 mobile, however, would have seriously com- 
 plicated the formalities. Meaux contains 
 about fourteen thousand inhabitants. Yet 
 it seems, when you are in it, to consist chiefly 
 of cathedral. When you are at a httle dis- 
 tance away from it, it seems to consist of 
 nothing but cathedral. In this it resembles 
 Chartres, and many another city in France. 
 
 We obtained a respectable carriage, with 
 a melancholy, resigned old driver, who said : 
 
 "For fifteen francs, plus always the pour- 
 hoire, I will take you to Barcy, which was 
 bombarded and burnt. I will show you all 
 the battlefield." 
 
 With those few words he thrilled me. 
 
 [20] 
 
THE ZONE OF PARIS 
 
 The road rose slowly from the canal of 
 the Ourcq; it was lined with the most beau- 
 tiful acacia trees, and through the screen of 
 the acacias one had ghmpses of the town, 
 diminishing, and of the cathedral, growing 
 larger and larger. The driver talked to us 
 in faint murmurs over his shoulder, indi- 
 cating the positions of various villages such 
 as Penchard, Poincy, Cregy, Monthyon, 
 Chambry, Varreddes, all of which will be 
 found in the future detailed histories of the 
 great locust-advance. 
 
 "Did you yourself see any Germans?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "At Meaux." 
 
 "How many?" 
 
 He smiled. "About a dozen." He under- 
 estimated the number, and the length of the 
 stay, but no matter. "They were scouts. 
 They came into the town for a few hours — 
 and left it. The Germans were deceived. 
 They might have got to Paris if they had 
 liked. But they were deceived." 
 
 "How were they deceived?" 
 
 [21] 
 
OYEE THERE 
 
 "They thought there were more Enghsh 
 in front of them than actually there were. 
 The headquarters of the English were over 
 there, at La Ferte-sous-Jouarre. The Eng- 
 lish blew up our bridge, as a measure of 
 precaution." 
 
 We drove on. 
 
 "The first tomb," said the driver, non- 
 chalantly, in his weak voice, lifting an elbow. 
 
 There it was, close by the roadside, and a 
 little higher than ourselves. The grave was 
 marked by four short, rough posts on which 
 was strung barbed wire; a white flag; a 
 white cross of painted wood, very simply 
 but neatly made; a faded wreath. We 
 could distinguish a few words of an inscrip- 
 tion. ". . . Comrades . . . 66th Terri- 
 torials. . . ." Soldiers were buried where 
 they fell, and this was the tomb of him who 
 fell nearest to Paris. It marked the last 
 homicidal effort of the Germans before their 
 advance in this region curved eastwards into 
 a retreat. This tomb was a very impressive 
 thing. The driver had thrilled me again. 
 
 We drove on. We were now in a large 
 
 [22] 
 
THE ZONE OF PARIS 
 
 rolling plain that sloped gradually behind 
 us southwards towards the Marne. It had 
 many little woods and spinneys, and no 
 watercourses. To the civihan it appeared 
 an ideal theatre for a glorious sanguinary 
 battle in which thousands of fathers, sons, 
 and brothers should die violently because 
 some hierarchy in a distant capital was suf- 
 fering from an acute attack of swelled head. 
 A few trenches here and there could still be 
 descried, but the whole land was in an ad- 
 vanced state of cultivation. Wheat and oats 
 and flaming poppies had now conquered the 
 land, had overrun and possessed it as no 
 Germans could ever do. The raw earth of 
 the trenches struggled vainly against the 
 tide of germination. The harvest was going 
 to be good. This plain, with its little woods 
 and little villages, glittered with a careless 
 and vast satisfaction in the sheets of sun- 
 shine that fell out of a bkie too intense for 
 the gaze. 
 
 We saw a few more tombs, and a great 
 general monument or cenotaph to the dead, 
 constructed at cross-roads by military 
 
 [23] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 engineers. The driver pointed to the village 
 of Penchard, which had been pillaged and 
 burnt by the enemy. It was only about a 
 mile off, but in the strong, dazzling light 
 we could distinguish not the least sign of 
 damage. Then we came to a farmhouse by 
 the roadside. It was empty; it was a shell, 
 and its roof was damaged. The Germans 
 had gutted it. They had taken away its 
 furniture as booty. (What they intended 
 to do with furniture out of a perfectly 
 mediocre farmhouse, hundreds of miles 
 from home, it is difficult to imagine.) 
 Articles which it did not suit them to carry 
 off they destroyed. Wine-casks of which 
 they could not drink the wine, they stove 
 in. . . . And then they retreated. 
 
 This farmhouse was somebody's house, 
 just as your home is yours, and mine mine. 
 To some woman or other every object in it 
 was familiar. She glanced at the canister on 
 the mantelpiece and said to herself: "I really 
 must clean that canister to-morrow." There 
 the house stood, with holes in its roof, empty. 
 And if there are half-a-million similarly 
 
 [24] 
 
THE ZONE OF PARIS 
 
 tragic houses in Europe to-day, as probably 
 there are, such frequency does not in the 
 shghtest degree diminish the forlorn tragedy 
 of that particular house which I have beheld. 
 
 At last Barcy came into view — the pierced 
 remains of its church tower over the brow 
 of a rise in the plain. Barcy is our driver's 
 show-place. Barcy was in the middle of 
 things. The fighting round Barcy lasted a 
 night and a day, and Barcy was taken and 
 retaken twice. 
 
 "You see the new red roofs," said the 
 driver as we approached. "By those new red 
 roofs you are in a state to judge a httle 
 what the damage was." 
 
 Some of the newly made roofs, however, 
 were of tarred paper. 
 
 The street by which we entered had a 
 small-pox of shrapnel and bullet-marks. 
 The post office had particularly suffered: 
 its bones were laid bare. It had not been 
 restored, but it was ready to do any busi- 
 ness that fell to be done, though closed on 
 that afternoon. We turned a corner, and 
 came upon the church. The work on the 
 
 [25] 
 
OYER THERE 
 
 church was well up to the reported Teutonic 
 average. Of its roof only the rafters were 
 left. The windows were all smashed, and 
 their lead fantastically twisted. The west 
 door was entirely gone; a rough grille of 
 strips of wood served in its stead. Through 
 this grille one could see the nave and altar, 
 in a miraculous and horrible confusion. It 
 was as if house-breakers had spent days in 
 doing their best to produce a professional 
 effect. The oak pews were almost unharmed. 
 Immediately behind the grille lay a great 
 bronze bell, about three feet high, covered 
 with beautifully incised inscriptions; it was 
 unhurt. Apparently nothing had been ac- 
 complished, in ten months, towards the 
 restoration of the church. But something 
 was contemplated, perhaps already started. 
 A polished steel saw lay on one of the pews, 
 but there was no workman attached to it. 
 
 While I was writing some notes in the 
 porch three little boys came up and dili- 
 gently stared at me. 
 
 "What dost thou want?" I said sharply 
 to the tallest. 
 
 [26] 
 
THE ZONE OF PARIS 
 
 "Nothing," he repHed. 
 
 Then three widows came up, one young, 
 one young and beautiful, one middle-aged. 
 
 We got back into the carriage. 
 
 "The village seems very deserted," I said 
 to the driver. 
 
 "What would you?" he answered. "Many 
 went. They had no home. Few have re- 
 turned." 
 
 All around were houses of which nothing 
 remained but the stone walls. The Germans 
 had shown great prowess here, and the 
 French still greater. It was a village upon 
 which rival commanders could gaze with 
 pride. It will remember the fourth and the 
 fifth of September. 
 
 We made towards Chambry. Chambry is 
 a village which, hke Meaux, lies below the 
 plain. Chambry escaped glory ; but between 
 it and Barcy, on the intervening slope 
 through which a good road runs, a battle was 
 fought. You know what kind of a battle it 
 was by the tombs. These tombs were very 
 like the others — an oblong of barbed wire, a 
 white flag, a white cross, sometimes a name, 
 
 [27] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 more often only a number, rarely a wreath. 
 You see first one, then another, then two, 
 then a sprinkling; and gradually you per- 
 ceive that the whole plain is dotted with 
 gleams of white flags and white crosses, so 
 that graves seem to extend right away to 
 the horizon marked by lines of trees. Then 
 you see a huge general grave. . . . Much 
 glory about that spot ! 
 
 And then a tomb with a black cross. Very 
 disconcerting, that black cr(5ss ! It is differ- 
 ent not only in colour, but in shape, from the 
 other crosses. Sinister! You need not to 
 be told that the body of a German lies be- 
 neath it. The whole devilishness of the 
 Prussian ideal is expressed in that black 
 cross. Then, as the road curves, you see 
 more black crosses, many black crosses, very 
 many. No flags, no names, no wreaths on 
 these tombs. Just a white stencilled number 
 in the centre of each cross. Women in Ger- 
 many are still lying awake at nights and 
 wondering what those tombs look like. 
 
 Watching over all the tombs, white and 
 black without distinction, are notices: "Re- 
 
 [28] 
 
THE ZONE OF PARIS 
 
 spect the Tombs." But the wheat and the 
 oats are not respecting the tombs. Every- 
 where the crops have encroached on them, 
 half -hiding them, smothering them, chmbing 
 right over them. In one place wheat is 
 ripening out of the very body of a German 
 soldier. . . . 
 
 Such is the nearest battlefield to Paris. 
 Corporate excursions to it are forbidden, and 
 wisely. For the attraction of the place, were 
 it given play, would completely demoralise 
 Meaux and the entire district. 
 
 In half-an-hour we were back at an utterly 
 matter-of-fact railway station, in whose 
 cafe an utterly matter-of-fact and capable 
 Frenchwoman gave us tea. And when we 
 reached Paris we had the news that a Staff 
 Captain of the French Army had been de- 
 tailed to escort us to the front and to show 
 us all that could safely be seen. Neverthe- 
 less, whatever I may experience, I shall not 
 experience again the thrill which I had when 
 the weak and melancholy old driver pointed 
 out the first tomb. That which we had just 
 seen was the front once. 
 
 [29] 
 
CHAPTER TWO 
 ON THE FRENCH FRONT 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 ON THE FRENCH FRONT 
 
 We were met at a poste de commande- 
 ment by the officers in charge, who were 
 
 waiting for us. And later we 
 A VIEW found that we were always 
 OF WAR thus met. The highest officer 
 
 present — General, Colonel, or 
 Commandant — was at every place at our 
 disposition to explain things — and to explain 
 them with that clarity of which the French 
 alone have the secret, and of which a super- 
 lative example exists in the official report of 
 the earlier phases of the war, offered to the 
 Anglo-Saxon public through Renter. Auto- 
 mobiles and chauffeurs abounded for our 
 small party of four. Never once at any 
 moment of the day, whether driving furi- 
 ously along somewhat deteriorated roads in 
 the car, or walking about the land, did I 
 lack a Staff officer who produced in me the 
 illusion that he was living solely in order to 
 
 [33] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 be of use to me. All details of the excursions 
 were elaborately organised; never once did 
 the organisation break down. No pre- 
 Lusitania American correspondent could 
 have been more spoiled by Germans desper- 
 ately anxious for his goodwill than I was 
 spoiled by these French who could not gain 
 my goodwill because they had the whole of 
 it already. 
 
 After the rites of greeting, we walked up 
 to the high terrace of a considerable chateau 
 close by, and France lay before us in a 
 shimmering vast semicircle. In the distance, 
 a low range of hills, irregularly wooded; 
 then a river ; then woods and spinneys ; then 
 vineyards — boundless vineyards which 
 climbed in varying slopes out of the valley 
 almost to our feet. Far to the left was a 
 town with lofty factory chimneys, smoke- 
 less. Peasant women were stooping in the 
 vineyards ; the whole of the earth seemed to 
 be cultivated and to be yielding bounteously. 
 It was a magnificent summer afternoon. 
 The sun was high, and a few huge purple 
 shadows moved with august deliberation 
 
 [34] 
 
ON THE FRENCH FRONT 
 
 across the brilliant greens. An impression 
 of peace, majesty, grandeur; and of the 
 mild, splendid richness of the soil of France. 
 
 "You see that white line on the hills op- 
 posite," said an officer, opening a large-scale 
 map. 
 
 I guessed it was a level road. 
 
 "That is the German trenches," said he. 
 "They are five miles away. Their gun posi- 
 tions are in the woods. Our own trenches 
 are invisible from here." 
 
 It constituted a great moment, this first 
 vision of the German trenches. With the 
 thrill came the lancinating thought: "All of 
 France that lies beyond that line, land just 
 like the land on which I am standing, in- 
 habited by people just Hke the people who 
 are talking to me, is under the insulting 
 tyranny of the invader," And I also 
 thought, as the sense of distance quickened 
 my imagination to realise that these trenches 
 stretched from Ostend to Switzerland, and 
 that the creators of them were prosecuting 
 similar enterprises as far north-east as Riga, 
 and as far south-east as the confines of 
 
 [35] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 Roumania: "The brigands are mad, but they 
 are mad in the grand manner." 
 
 We were at the front. 
 
 We had driven for twenty miles along a 
 very busy road which was closed to civiUans, 
 and along which even Staff officers could not 
 travel without murmuring the password to 
 placate the hostile vigilance of sentries. The 
 civil life of the district was in abeyance, 
 proceeding precariously from meal to meal. 
 Aeroplanes woke the sleep. No letter could 
 leave a post-office without a precautionary 
 delay of three days. Telegrams were sus- 
 pect. To get into a railway station was 
 almost as difficult as to get into paradise. 
 A passport or a safe-conduct was the sine 
 qua non of even the restricted liberty which 
 had survived. And yet nowhere did I see a 
 frown nor hear a complaint. Everybody 
 comprehended that the exigencies of the ter- 
 rific military machine were necessary exi- 
 gencies. Everybody waited, waited, in con- 
 fidence and with tranquil smiles. 
 
 Also it is misleading to say that civil life 
 was in abeyance. For the elemental basis 
 
 [36] 
 
ON THE FRENCH ERONT 
 
 of its prosperity and its amenities continued 
 just as though the lunatic buUies of Potsdam 
 had never dictated to Vienna the ultimatum 
 for Serbia. The earth was yielding, 
 fabulously. It was yielding up to within 
 a mile and a-half of the German wire 
 entanglements. The peasants would not 
 neglect the earth. Officers remonstrated 
 with them upon their perilous rash- 
 ness. They rephed: "The land must be 
 tilled." Must! When the German artillery 
 begins to fire, the blue-clad women sink out 
 of sight amid the foliage. Half an hour 
 after it has ceased they cautiously emerge, 
 and resume. One peasant put up an um- 
 brella, but he was a man. 
 
 We were veritably at the front. There 
 was, however, not a whisper of war, nor 
 anything visible except the thin, pale line 
 Hke a striation on the distant hills. Then a 
 far-off sound of thunder is heard. It is a 
 gun. A faint puff cff smoke is pointed out 
 to us. Neither the rumble nor the transient 
 cloudlet makes any apparent impression on 
 the placid and wide dignity of the scene. 
 
 [37] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 Nevertheless, this is war. And war seems 
 a very vague, casual, and negligible thing. 
 We are led about fifty feet to the left, where 
 in a previous phase a shell has indented a 
 huge hole in the earth. The sight of this 
 hole renders war rather less vague and rather 
 less negligible. 
 
 "There are eighty thousand men in front 
 of us," says an officer, indicating the benign 
 shimmering, empty, landscape. 
 
 "But where?" 
 
 "Interred — in the trenches." 
 
 It is incredible. 
 
 "And the other interred — the dead?" I 
 asx^. 
 
 "We never speak of them. But we think 
 of them a good deal." 
 
 *^£, ^^ jS^ jfe 
 
 "*JV ^* ^» 7|» 
 
 Still a little closer to war. 
 
 The pare du genie — engineers' park. We 
 inspected hills of coils of the most formid- 
 able barbed wire, far surpassing that of 
 farmers, well contrived to tear to pieces any 
 human being who, having got into its en- 
 tanglement, should try to get out again. One 
 
 [38] 
 
ON THE FRENCH FEONT 
 
 thought that nothing but steam-chisels would 
 be capable of cutting it. Also stacks of 
 
 timber for shoring up mines 
 BEHIND THE which sappers would dig be- 
 FiRiNG LINE neath the enemy trenches. 
 
 Also sacks to be filled with 
 earth for improvised entrenching. Also 
 the four-pointed contraptions called chevaucc 
 de frise, which — however you throw them 
 — will always stick a fatal point upwards, 
 to impale the horse or man who cannot 
 or will not look where he is going. Even 
 tarred paper, for keeping the weather out of 
 trenches or anything else. And all these 
 things in unimagined quantities. 
 
 Close by, a few German prisoners per- 
 forming sanitary duties under a guard. 
 They were men in God's image, and they 
 went about on the assmnption that all the 
 rest of the war lay before them and that 
 there was a lot of it. A General told us 
 that he had mentioned to them the possi- 
 bihty of an exchange of prisoners, where- 
 upon they had gloomily and pathetically 
 protested. They very sincerely did not want 
 
 [39] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 to go back whence they had come, preferring 
 captivity, humihation, and the basest tasks 
 to a share in the great glory of German 
 arms. To me they had a brutahsed air, no 
 doubt one minor consequence of mihtary 
 ambition in high places. 
 
 Not many minutes away was a hospital 
 — ^what the French call an ambulance de 
 premiere ligne^ contrived out of a factory. 
 This was the hospital nearest to the trenches 
 in that region, and the wounded come to it 
 direct from the dressing-stations which lie 
 immediately behind the trenches. When a 
 man falls, or men fall, the automobile is 
 telephoned for, and it arrives at the ap- 
 pointed rendezvous generally before the 
 stretcher-bearers, who may have to walk for 
 twenty or thirty minutes over rough ground. 
 A wounded man may be, and has been, 
 operated upon in this hospital within an 
 hour of his wounding. It is organised on a 
 permanent basis, for cases too serious for 
 removal have, of course, to remain there. 
 Nevertheless, these establishments are, as 
 regards their staff, patients, and material, 
 
 [40] 
 
ON THE FRENCH FKONT 
 
 highly mobile. One hospital of two hun- 
 dred beds was once entirely evacuated within 
 sixty minutes upon a sudden order. We 
 walked through small ward after small 
 ward, store-room after store-room, aseptic 
 operating-room and septic operating-room, 
 all odorous with ether, and saw little but 
 resignation, and not much of that, for pa- 
 tients happened to be few. Yet the worn 
 face of the doctor in charge showed that 
 vast labours must have been accomplished in 
 those sombre chambers. 
 
 In the very large courtyard a tent operat- 
 ing-hospital was established. The white 
 attendants were waiting within in the pallid 
 obscurity, among tables, glass jars, and in- 
 struments. The surgeon's wagon, with hot 
 water and sterilising apparatus, was waiting 
 without. The canvas organism was a real 
 hospital, and the point about it was that it 
 could move off complete at twenty-five 
 minutes' notice and set itself up again in 
 any other ordained location in another 
 twenty-five minutes. 
 
 Another short ride, and we were in an 
 
 [41] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 aviation park, likewise tented, in the midst 
 of an immense wheatfield on the lofty side 
 of a hill. There were six hangars of canvas, 
 each containing an aeroplane and serving as 
 a dormitory; and for each aeroplane a car- 
 riage and a motor — for sometimes aero- 
 planes are wounded and have to travel by 
 road; it takes ninety minutes to dismount 
 an aeroplane. Each corps of an army has 
 one of these e-scadrilles or teams of aero- 
 planes, and the army as a whole has an extra 
 one, so that, if an army consists of eight 
 corps, it possesses fifty-four aeroplanes. I 
 am speaking now of the particular type of 
 aeroplane employed for regulating artillery 
 fire. It was a young non-commissioned 
 ofiicer with a marked Southern accent who 
 explained to us the secret nature of things. 
 He was wearing both the Military Medal 
 and the Legion of Honour, for he had done 
 wondrous feats in the way of shooting the 
 occupants of Taubes in mid-air. He got out 
 one of the machines, and exhibited its tricks 
 and its wireless apparatus, and invited us to 
 sit in the seat of the flier. The weather was 
 
 [42] 
 
ON THE FRENCH FRONT 
 
 quite unsuitable for flying, but, setting four 
 men to hold the machine in place, he started 
 the Gnome motor and ran it up to two 
 thousand revolutions a minute, creating a 
 draught which bowed the fluttered wheat 
 for many yards behind and blew hats off. 
 And in the middle of this pother he con- 
 tinued to offer lucid and surprising explana- 
 tions to deafened ears until his superior 
 officer, excessively smart and looking like a 
 cross between a cavalryman and a yachts- 
 man, arrived on the scene swinging a cane. 
 
 It was natural that after this we should 
 visit some auto=cannons expressly con- 
 structed for bringing down aeroplanes. In 
 front of these marvels it was suggested to 
 us that we should neither take photographs 
 nor write down exact descriptions. As re- 
 gards the latter, the Staff Officers had reason 
 to be reassured. No living journalist could 
 have reproduced the scientific account of the 
 sighting arrangements given to us in an 
 esoteric yet quite comprehensible language 
 by the high priest of these guns, who was a 
 middle-aged artillery Captain. It lasted 
 
 [43] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 about twenty minutes. It was complete, 
 final, unchallengeable. At intervals the 
 artillery Captain himself admitted that such- 
 and-such a part of the device was tres beau. 
 It was. There was only one word of which 
 I could not grasp the significance in that 
 connection. It recurred. Several times I 
 determined to ask the Captain what he 
 meant us to understand by that word; but 
 I lacked moral courage. I doubt whether in 
 all the lethal apparatus that I saw in France 
 I saw anything quite equal to the demoniac 
 ingenuity of these massive guns. The proof 
 of guns is in the shooting. These guns 
 do not merely aim at Taubes: they hit 
 them. 
 
 I will not, however, derogate from the 
 importance of the illustrious "seventy-five." 
 We saw one of these on an afternoon of 
 much marching up and down hills and 
 among woods, gazing at horses and hot- 
 water douches, baths, and barbers' shops, 
 and deep dug-outs called "Tipperary," and 
 guns of various calibre, including the 
 "seventy-five." The "seventy-five" is a very 
 
 [44] 
 
ON THE FRENCH FRONT 
 
 sympathetic creature, in blue-grey with 
 metalHc ghnts. He is perfectly easy to see 
 when you approach him from behind, but 
 get twenty yards in front of him and he is 
 absolutely undiscoverable. Viewed from 
 the sky, he is part of the forest. Viewed 
 from behind, he is perceived to be in a 
 wooden hut with rafters, in which you can 
 just stand upright. We beheld the work- 
 ing of the gun, by two men, and we beheld 
 the different sorts of shell in their delved 
 compartments. But this was not enough 
 for us. We ventured to suggest that it 
 would be proper to try to kill a few Germans 
 for our amusement. The request was in- 
 stantly granted. 
 
 "Time for 4,300 metres," said the Lieu- 
 tenant quickly and sternly, and a soldier 
 manipulated the obus. 
 
 It was done. It was done with discon- 
 certing rapidity. The shell was put into 
 its place. A soldier pulled a string. Bang! 
 A neat, clean, not too loud bang ! The mes- 
 senger had gone invisibly forth. The pret- 
 tiest part of the affair was the recoil and 
 
 [45] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 automatic swinging back of the gun. Lest 
 the first shell should have failed in its mis- 
 sion, the Commandant ordered a second one 
 to be sent, and this time the two artillerymen 
 sat in seats attached on either side to the gun 
 itself. The "seventy-five" was enthusiastic- 
 ally praised by every officer present. He is 
 beloved like a favourite sporting dog, and 
 with cause. 
 
 ^ ^ <V nf <!« 
 
 At the side of the village street there was 
 a bit of sharply sloping ground, with a 
 
 ladder thrown on it to 
 IN THE make descent easier. 
 
 FIRE-TRENCHES "This Way," said one of 
 
 the officers. 
 
 We followed him, and in an instant were 
 in the communication trench. The change 
 was magical in its quickness. At one 
 moment we were on the earth; at the next 
 we were in it. The trench was so narrow 
 that I had to hold my stick in front of me, 
 as there was no room to swing the arms; 
 the chalky sides left traces on the elbows. 
 
 [46] 
 
ON THE TRElSrCH PEONT 
 
 The floor was for the most part quite dry, 
 but at intervals there were muddy pools 
 nearly ankle-deep. The top of the trench 
 was about level with the top of my head, 
 and long grasses or chance cereals, bending 
 down, continually brushed the face. An 
 officer was uplifted for the rest of the day 
 by finding a four-leaved clover at the edge 
 of the trench. The day was warm, and the 
 trench was still warmer. Its direction never 
 ceased to change, generally in curves, but 
 now and then by a sharp corner. We walked 
 what seemed to be an immense distance, and 
 then came out on to a road, which we were 
 instructed to cross two by two, as, like the 
 whole of the region, it was subject to Ger- 
 man artillery. Far down this road we could 
 see the outlying village for which we were 
 bound. . . . 
 
 A new descent into the earth. We pro- 
 ceed a few yards, and the trench suddenly 
 divides into three. We do not know which 
 to take. An officer following us does not 
 know which to take. The guiding officer is 
 perhaps thirty yards in front ! We call. No 
 
 [47] 
 
OVER THEEE 
 
 answer. We climb out of the trench on to 
 the surface desolation; we can see nothing, 
 nothing whatever, but land that is running 
 horribly to waste. Our friends are as in- 
 visible as moles. There is not a trace even 
 of their track. This is a fine object-lesson 
 in the efficacy of trenches. At length an 
 officer returns and saves us. We have to 
 take the trench on the extreme right. Much 
 more hot walking, and a complete loss of 
 the notion of direction. 
 
 Then we come out on to another portion 
 of the same road at the point where a main 
 line of railway crosses it. We are told to 
 run to shelter. In the near distance a Ger- 
 man captive balloon sticks up moveless 
 against the sky. The main line of railway 
 is a sorrowful sight. Its signal-wires hang 
 in festoons. Its rails are rusting. The 
 abandonment of a main line in a civilised 
 country is a thing unknown, a thing con- 
 trary to sense, an impossible thing, so that 
 one wonders whether one is not visiting the 
 remains of a civilisation dead and definitely 
 closed. Very strange thoughts pass through 
 
 [48] 
 
ON THE FRENCH FRONT 
 
 the mind. . . . That portion of the main 
 hne cannot be used by the Germans because 
 it is within the French positions, and it can- 
 not be used by the French because it is 
 utterly exposed to German artillery. Thus, 
 perhaps ten kilometres of it are left forlorn 
 to illustrate the imbecile brutality of an 
 invasion. 
 
 There is a good deal more trench before 
 we reach the village which forms the head 
 of a salient in the French line. This village 
 is knocked all to pieces. It is a fearful spec- 
 tacle. We see a Teddy-bear left on what 
 remains of a flight of stairs, a bedstead 
 buried to the knobs in debris, skeletons of 
 birds in a cage hanging under an eave. The 
 entire place is in the zone of fire, and it has 
 been tremendously bombarded throughout 
 the war. Nevertheless, some houses still 
 stand, and seventeen civilians — seven men 
 and ten women — insist on remaining there. 
 I talked to one fat old woman, who con- 
 tended that there was no danger. A few 
 minutes later a shell fell within a hundred 
 yards of her, and it might just as well have 
 
 [49] 
 
OYER THERE 
 
 fallen on the top of her coiffe, to prove 
 finally to her the noble reasonableness of 
 war and the reality of the German necessity 
 for expansion. 
 
 The village church was laid low. In the 
 roof two thin arches of the groining remain, 
 marvellously. One remembers this freak of 
 balance — and a few poor flowers on the 
 altar. Mass is celebrated in that church 
 every Sunday morning. We spoke with the 
 cure, an extremely emaciated priest of 
 middle age ; he wore the Legion of Honour. 
 We took to the trenches again, having in the 
 interval been protected by several acres of 
 ruined masonry. About this point geog- 
 raphy seemed to end for me. I was in a 
 maze of burrowing, from which the hot sun 
 could be felt but not seen. I saw stencilled 
 signs, such as "Tranchee de replif^ and signs 
 containing numbers. I saw a sign over a 
 door: ''Guetteur de jour et de nuW — 
 watcher by day and by night. 
 
 "Anybody in there?" 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 The door was opened. In the gloom a 
 
 [50] 
 
.« r\ r\ ■% '.V^v ^^- - 
 
 
 THE CHURCH AT BETHANY 
 
 "The village church was laid low. In the roof two 
 thin arches of the groining remain, marveiiously . 
 One remembers this freak of balance— and a jew 
 poor flowers on the altar. Mass zs celebrated in 
 that church every Sunday morning. [fage bU\ 
 
ON THE FRENCH FRONT 
 
 pale man stood rather like a ghost, almost 
 as disconcerting as a ghost, watching. He 
 ignored us, and kept on watching. 
 
 Then through a hole I had a glimpse of an 
 abandoned road, where no man might live, 
 and beyond it a vast wire entanglement. 
 Then we curved, and I was in an open place, 
 a -sort of redoubt contrived out of httle homes 
 and cattle-stables. I heard irregular rifle- 
 fire close by, but I could not see who was 
 firing. I was shown the machine-gun 
 chamber, and the blind which hides the 
 aperture for the muzzle was hfted, but only 
 mxomentarily. I was shown, too, the deep 
 underground refuges to which everybody 
 takes in case of a heavy bombardment. 
 Then we were in the men's quarters, in 
 houses very well protected by advance walls 
 to the north, and at length we saw some 
 groups of men. 
 
 ''Bon jour, les poilusT 
 
 This from the Commandant himself, with 
 jollity. The Commandant had a wonderful 
 smile, which showed bright teeth, and his 
 gestures were almost as quick as those of his 
 
 [51] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 Lieutenant, whom the regiment had chris- 
 tened "The Electric Man." 
 
 The soldiers saluted. This salute was so 
 proud, so eager, that it might have brought 
 tears to the eyes. The soldiers stood up 
 very straight, but not at all stiffly. I noticed 
 one man, because I could not notice them 
 all. He threw his head back, and slightly to 
 one side, and his brown beard stuck out. 
 His eyes sparkled. Every muscle was taut. 
 He seemed to be saying, "My Commandant, 
 I know my worth; I am utterly yours — 
 you won't get anything better." A young 
 officer said to me that these men had in them 
 a wild beast and an angel. It was a good 
 saying, and I wished I had thought of it 
 myself. This regiment had been in this vil- 
 lage since the autumn. It had declined to 
 be relieved. It seemed absolutely fresh. 
 One hears that individual valour is about the 
 same in all armies — everywhere very high. 
 Events appear to have justified the asser- 
 tion. German valour is astounding. I have 
 not seen any German regiment, but I do 
 not believe that there are in any German 
 
 [52] 
 
ON THE FRENCH FRONT 
 
 regiment any men equal to these men. After 
 all, ideas must count, and these men know 
 that they are defending an outraged coun- 
 try, while the finest German soldier knows 
 that he is outraging it. 
 
 The regiment was relatively very com- 
 fortable. It had plenty of room. It had 
 made a little garden, with little terra-cotta 
 statues. It possessed also a gymnasium 
 ground, where we witnessed some excellent 
 high jumping; and — more surprising — a 
 theatre, with stage, dressing-room, and 
 women's costumes. 
 
 The summit of our excitement was at- 
 tained when we were led into the first-line 
 trench. 
 
 "Is this really the first-line trench?" 
 
 "It is." 
 
 Well, the first-line trench, very remark- 
 ably swept and dusted and spotless — as 
 were all the trenches beyond the communi- 
 cation trench — ^was not much like a trench. 
 It was like a long wooden gallery. Its sides 
 were of wood, its ceiling was of wood, its 
 floor was of wood. The carpentry, though 
 
 [53] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 not expert, was quite neat; and we were 
 told that not a single engineer had ever 
 been in the position, which, nevertheless, is 
 reckoned to be one of the most ingenious on 
 the whole front. The gallery is rather dark, 
 because it is lighted only by the loop-holes. 
 These loop-holes are about eight inches 
 square, and more than eight inches deep, 
 because they must, of course, penetrate the 
 outer earthwork. A couple of inches from 
 the bottom a strong wire is fixed across them. 
 At night the soldier puts his gun under this 
 wire, so that he may not fire too high. 
 
 The loop-holes are probably less than a 
 yard apart, allowing enough space in front 
 of each for a man to move comfortably. 
 Beneath the loop-holes runs a wooden plat- 
 form for the men to stand on. Behind the 
 loop-holes, in the ceiling, are large hooks to 
 hang guns on. Many of the loop-holes are 
 labelled with men's names, written in a good 
 engrossing hand ; and between the loop-holes, 
 and level with them, are pinned coloured 
 postcards and photographs of women, girls, 
 and children. Tucked conveniently away 
 
 [54] 
 
ON THE FRENCH FRONT 
 
 in zinc cases underground are found zinc 
 receptacles for stores of cartridges, powders 
 to be used against gas, grenades, and 
 matches. 
 
 One gazes through a loop-hole. Occa- 
 sional firing can be heard, but it is not in the 
 immediate vicinity. Indeed, all the men we 
 can see have stepped down from the plat- 
 form in order to allow us to pass freely along 
 it and inspect. Through the loop-hole can 
 be distinguished a barbed-wire entangle- 
 ment, then a little waste ground, then more 
 barbed-wire entanglement (German), and 
 then the German trenches, which are less 
 than half a mile away, and which stretch 
 round behind us in a semicircle. 
 
 "Do not look too long. They have very 
 good glasses." 
 
 The hint is taken. It is singular to reflect 
 that just as we are gazing privily at the 
 Germans, so the Germans are gazing privily 
 at us. A mere strip of level earth separates 
 them from us, but that strip is impassable, 
 save at night, when the Frenchmen often 
 creep up to the German wire. There is a 
 
 [55] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 terrible air of permanency about the whole 
 affair. Not only the passage of time pro- 
 duces this effect ; the telephone-wire running 
 along miles of communication-trench, the 
 elaborateness of the fighting trenches, the 
 established routine and regularity of exist- 
 ence — all these also contribute to it. But 
 the air of permanency is fallacious. The 
 Germans are in France. Every day of slow 
 preparation brings nearer the day when the 
 Germans will not be in France. That is 
 certain. An immense expectancy hangs 
 over the land, enchanting it. 
 
 We leave the first-line trench, with regret. 
 But we have been in it! 
 
 In the quarters of the Commandant, a 
 farm-house at the back end of the village, 
 champagne was served, admirable cham- 
 pagne. We stood round a long table, wait- 
 ing till the dilatory should have arrived. 
 The party had somehow grown. For ex- 
 ample, the cure came, amid acclamations. 
 He related how a Lieutenant had accosted 
 him in front of some altar and asked whether 
 he might be allowed to celebrate the Mass. 
 
 [56] 
 
ON THE FRENCH FRONT 
 
 "That depends," said the cure. "You can- 
 not celebrate if you are not a priest. If 
 you are, you can." "I am a priest," said the 
 Lieutenant. And he celebrated the Mass. 
 Also the Intendant came, a grey-haired, 
 dour, kind-faced man. The Intendant has 
 charge of supplies, and he is cherished ac- 
 cordingly. And in addition to the Com- 
 mandant, and the Electric Man, and our 
 Staff Captains, there were sundry non-com- 
 missioned officers, and even privates. 
 
 We were all equal. The French Army 
 is by far the most democratic institution I 
 have ever seen. On our journeys the Staff 
 Captains and ourselves habitually ate with 
 a sergeant and a corporal. The corporal 
 was the son of a General. The sergeant was 
 a man of business and a writer. His first 
 words when he met me were in English: 
 "Monsieur Bennett, I have read your 
 books." One of our chauffeurs was a well- 
 known printer who employs three hundred 
 and fifty men — when there is peace. The 
 relations between officers and men are simply 
 unique. 1 never saw a greeting that was 
 
 [57] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 not exquisite. The officers were full of 
 knowledge, decision, and appreciative kindli- 
 ness. The men were bursting with eager 
 devotion. This must count, perhaps, even 
 more than big guns. 
 
 The Commandant, of course, presided at 
 the vin dfhonneur. His glance and his smile, 
 his latent energy, would have inspired devo- 
 tion in a wooden block. Every glass touched 
 every glass, an operation which entailed 
 some three-score clinkings. And while we 
 were drinking, one of the Staff Captains — 
 the one whose English was the less perfect 
 of the two — began to tell me of the career 
 of the Commandant, in Algeria and else- 
 where. Among other things, he had carried 
 his wounded men on his own shoulders 
 under fire from the field of battle to a place 
 of safety. He was certainly under forty; 
 he might have been under thirty-five. 
 
 Said the Staff Captain, ingenuously 
 translating in his mind from French to Eng- 
 lish, and speaking with slow caution, as 
 though picking his way among the chevauoo 
 de frise of the English language : 
 
 [58] 
 
ON THE FEENCH FRONT 
 
 "There are — very beautiful pages — in his 
 — mihtary hfe." 
 
 He meant: "II y a de tres belles pages 
 dans sa carriere militaire" 
 
 Which is subtly not quite the same thing. 
 
 As we left the farm-house to regain the 
 communication trench there was a fierce, 
 loud noise hke this: ZZZZZ ssss ZZZZ sss 
 ZZZZ, And then an explosion. The ob- 
 server in the captive balloon had noticed un- 
 accustomed activity in our village, and the 
 consequences were coming. We saw yellow 
 smoke rising just beyond the wall of the 
 farmyard, about two hundred yards away. 
 We received instructions to hurry to the 
 trench. We had not gone fifty yards in the 
 trench when there was another celestial con- 
 fusion of S's and Z's. Imitating the officers, 
 we bent low in the trench. The explosion 
 followed. 
 
 "One, two, three, four, five," said a Cap- 
 tain. "One should not rise till one has 
 counted five, because all the bits have not 
 fallen. If it is a big shell, count ten." 
 
 We tiptoed and glanced over the edge 
 
 [59] 
 
OYER THERE 
 
 of the trench. Yellow smoke was rising at 
 a distance of about three lawn-tennis courts. 
 
 "With some of their big shells/' said the 
 Captain, "y^^ ^^^ hesir nothing until it is 
 too late, for the reason that the shell travels 
 more quickly than the sound of it. The 
 sounds reach your ears in inverse order — if 
 you are alive." 
 
 A moment later a third shell dropped in 
 the same plot of ground. 
 
 And even a mile and a half off, at the other 
 end of the communication trench, when the 
 automobiles emerged from their shelter into 
 the view of the captive balloon, the officers 
 feared for the automobiles, and we fled very 
 swiftly. 
 
 We had been to the very front of the front, 
 and it was the most cheerful, confident, high- 
 spirited place I had seen in France, or in 
 England either. 
 
 [60] 
 
CHAPTER THREE 
 RUINS 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 RUINS 
 
 When you go into Rheims by the Eper- 
 nay road, the Ufe of the street seems to be 
 proceeding, as usual, except that 
 RHEIMS octroi formalities have been abol- 
 ished. Women, some young and 
 beautiful, stare nonchalantly as the car 
 passes. Children are playing and shrieking 
 in the sunshine; the little cafes and shops 
 keep open door; the baker is busy; middle- 
 aged persons go their ways in meditation 
 upon existence. It is true there are soldiers ; 
 but there are soldiers in every important 
 French town at all seasons of the year in 
 peace-time. In short, the spectacle is just 
 that ordinarily presented by the poorer ex- 
 terior thoroughfares leading towards the 
 centre of a city. 
 
 And yet, in two minutes, in less than two 
 minutes, you may be in a quarter where no 
 life is left. This considerable quarter is not 
 
 [63] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 seriously damaged — it is destroyed. Not 
 many houses, but every house in it will have 
 to be rebuilt from the cellars. This quarter 
 is desolation. Large shops, large houses, 
 small shops, and small houses have all been 
 treated alike. The facade may stand, the 
 roof may have fallen in entirely or only par- 
 tially, floors may have disappeared alto- 
 gether or may still be clinging at odd angles 
 to the walls — the middle of every building is 
 the same: a vast heap of what once was the 
 material of a home or a business, and what 
 now is foul rubbish. In many instances the 
 shells have revealed the functioning of the 
 home at its most intimate, and that is seen 
 which none should see. Indignation rises 
 out of the heart. Amid stacks of refuse you 
 may distinguish a bath, a magnificent frag- 
 ment of mirror, a piece of tapestry, a sauce- 
 pan. In a funeral shop wreaths still hang 
 on their hooks for sale. Telephone and tele- 
 graph wires depend in a loose tangle from 
 the poles. The clock of the Protestant 
 church has stopped at a quarter to six. The 
 shells have been freakish. In one building 
 
 [64] 
 
RUINS 
 
 a shell harmlessly made a hole in the court- 
 yard large enough to bury every commander 
 of a German army; another shell — a 210 
 mm. — went through an inner wall and 
 opened up the cellars by destroying 150 
 square feet of ground-floor : ten people were 
 in the cellars, and none was hurt. Uninjured 
 signs of cafes and shops, such as "The Good 
 Hope," "The Success of the Day," meet 
 your gaze with sardonic calm. 
 
 The inhabitants of this quarter, and of 
 other quarters in Rheims, have gone. Some 
 are dead. Others are picnicking in Eper- 
 nay, Paris, elsewhere. They have left 
 everything behind them, and yet they have 
 left nothing. Each knows his lot in the im- 
 mense tragedy. Nobody can realise the 
 whole of the tragedy. It defies the mind; 
 and, moreover, the horror of it is allayed 
 somewhat by the beautiful forms which ruin 
 — even the ruin of modern ugly architecture 
 — occasionally takes. The effect of the pallor 
 of a bedroom wall-paper against smoke- 
 blackened masonry, where some corner of a 
 house sticks up like a tall, serrated column 
 
 [65] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 out of the confusion, remains obstinately in 
 the memory, symbolising, somehow, the 
 grand German deed. 
 
 For do not forget that this quarter accu- 
 rately represents what the Germans came out 
 of Germany into France deliberately to do. 
 This material devastation, this annihilation 
 of effort, hope, and love, this substitution 
 of sorrow for joy — is just what plans and 
 guns were laid for, what the worshipped 
 leaders of the Fatherland prepared with the 
 most wanton and scientific solicitude. It is 
 desperately cruel. But it is far worse than 
 cruel — it is idiotic in its immense futility. 
 The perfect idiocy of the thing overwhelms 
 you. And to your reason it is as monstrous 
 that one population should overrun another 
 with murder and destruction from political 
 covetousness as that two populations should 
 go to war concerning a religious creed. 
 Indeed, it is more monstrous. It is an ob- 
 scene survival, a phenomenon that has 
 strayed, through some negligence of fate, 
 into the wrong century. 
 
 Strange, in an adjoining quarter, partly 
 
 [66] 
 
RUINS 
 
 but not utterly destroyed, a man is coming 
 home in a cab with luggage from the station, 
 and the servant-girl waits for him at the 
 house-door. And I heard of a case where 
 a property-owner who had begun to build a 
 house just before the war has lately resmned 
 building operations. In the Esplanade 
 Ceres the fountain is playing amid all the 
 ravage; and the German trenches, in that 
 direction, are not more than two miles away. 
 
 It is quite impossible for any sane man to 
 examine the geography of the region of 
 destruction which I have so summarily 
 described without being convinced that the 
 Germans, in shelling it, were simply aiming 
 at the Cathedral. Tracing the streets 
 affected, one can follow distinctly the process 
 of their searching for the precise range of 
 the Cathedral. Practically the whole of the 
 damage is concentrated on the line of the 
 Cathedral. 
 
 But the Cathedral stands. 
 
 Its parvis is grass-grown; the hotels on 
 the parvis are heavily battered, and if they 
 are not destroyed it is because the Cathedral 
 
 [67] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 sheltered them ; the Archbishop's palace lies 
 in fragments; all aromid is complete ruin. 
 But the Cathedral stands, high above the 
 level of disaster, a unique target, and a tar- 
 get successfully defiant. The outer roof is 
 quite gone ; much masonry is smashed ; some 
 of the calcined statues have exactly the ap- 
 pearance of tortured human flesh. But in 
 its essence, and in its splendid outlines, the 
 building remains — apparently unconquer- 
 able. The towers are particularly serene 
 and impressive. The deterioration is, of 
 course, tremendously severe. Scores, if not 
 hundreds, of statues, each of which was a 
 masterpiece, are spoilt; great quantities of 
 carving are defaced; quite half the glass is 
 irremediably broken; the whole of the in- 
 terior non-structural decoration is destroyed. 
 But the massiveness of the Cathedral has 
 withstood German shrapnel. The place will 
 never be the same again, or nearly the same. 
 Nevertheless, Rheims Cathedral trium- 
 phantly exists. 
 
 The Germans use it as a vent for their 
 irritation. When things go wrong for them 
 
 [68] 
 
BUINS 
 
 at other parts of the front, they shell Rheims 
 Cathedral. It has absolutely no military 
 interest, but it is beloved by civihsed man- 
 kind, and therefore is a means of offence. 
 The French tried to remove some of the 
 glass, utihsing an old scaffolding. At once 
 the German shells came. Nothing was to 
 be saved that shrapnel could destroy. Shrap- 
 nel is futile against the body of the Ca- 
 thedral, as is proved by the fact that 3000 
 shells have fallen on or near it in a day and 
 a night. If the Germans used high-explo- 
 sive, one might beheve that they had some 
 deep religious aim necessitating the non- 
 existence of the Cathedral. But they do not 
 use high-explosive here. Shrapnel merely 
 and uselessly torments. 
 
 When I first saw the Cathedral I was told 
 that there had been calm for several days. 
 I know that German agents in neutral coun- 
 tries constantly deny that the Cathedral is 
 now shelled. Wlien I saw the Cathedral 
 again the next morning, five shells had just 
 been aimed at it. I inspected the hole ex- 
 cavated by a 155-mm. shell at the foot of the 
 
 [69] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 eastern extremity, close to the walls. This 
 hole was certainly not there when I made 
 the circuit of the Cathedral on the previous 
 evening. It came into existence at 6.40 a. m., 
 and I inspected it at 8.20 a. m., and a news- 
 paper boy offered me that morning's paper 
 on the very edge of it. A fragment of shell, 
 picked up warm by the architect in charge 
 of the Cathedral and given to me, is now in 
 my pocket. 
 
 We had a luncheon party at Rheims, in 
 a certain hotel. This hotel had been closed 
 for a time, but the landlady 
 A LUNCHEON had taken heart again. The 
 PARTY personnel appeared to con- 
 
 sist solely of the landlady 
 and a relative. Both women were in mourn- 
 ing. They served us themselves, and the 
 meal was excellent, though one could get 
 neither soda-water nor cigars. Shells had 
 greeted the city a few hours earlier, but their 
 effect had been only material; they are en- 
 tirely ignored by the steadfast inhabitants, 
 who do their primitive business in the deso- 
 lated, paralysed organism with an indiffer- 
 
 [70] 
 
RUINS 
 
 ence which is as resigned as it is stoic. Those 
 ladies might well have been blown to bits as 
 they crossed the courtyard bearing a dish 
 of cherries or a bottle of wine. The sun 
 shone steadily on the rich foliage of the 
 street, and dogs and children rollicked mildly 
 beneath the branches. 
 
 Several officers were with us, including 
 two Staff Officers. These officers, not be- 
 longing to the same unit, had a great deal 
 to tell each other and us: so much, that the 
 luncheon lasted nearly two hours. Some of 
 them had been in the retreat, in the battles 
 of the Marne and of the Aisne, and in the 
 subsequent trench fighting; none had got a 
 scratch. Of an unsurpassed urbanity and 
 austerity themselves, forming part of the 
 finest civilisation which this world has yet 
 seen, thoroughly appreciative of the subtle 
 and powerful qualities of the race to which 
 they belong, they exhibited a chill and re- 
 strained surprise at the manners of the in- 
 vaders. One had seen two thousand cham- 
 pagne-bottles strewn around a chateau from 
 which the invaders had decamped, and the 
 
 [71] 
 
OYER THERE 
 
 old butler of the house going carefully- 
 through the grounds and picking up the 
 bottles which by chance had not been opened. 
 The method of opening champagne, by the 
 way, was a stroke of the sabre on the neck 
 of the bottle. The German manner was 
 also to lay the lighted cigar on the finest 
 table-linen, so that by the burnt holes the 
 proprietors might count their guests. An- 
 other officer had seen a whole countryside of 
 villages littered with orchestrions and ab- 
 sinthe-bottles, ground-work of an inter- 
 rupted musical and bacchic fete whose 
 details must be imagined, like many other 
 revolting and scabrous details which no com- 
 positor would consent to set up in type, but 
 which, nevertheless, are known and form a 
 striking part of the unwritten history of the 
 attack on civilisation. You may have read 
 hints of these things again and again, but no 
 amount of previous preparation will soften 
 for you the shock of getting them first-hand 
 from eye-witnesses whose absolute reliability 
 it would be fatuous to question. 
 
 What these men, with their vivid gestures, 
 
 [72] 
 
EUINS 
 
 bright eyes, and perfect phrasing, most de- 
 hght in is personal heroism. And be it 
 remembered that, though they do tell a 
 funny story about German scouts who, in 
 order to do their work, painted themselves 
 the green of trees — and then, to complete 
 the illusion, when they saw a Frenchman 
 began to tremble like leaves — they give full 
 value to the courage of the invaders. But, 
 of course, it is the courage of Frenchmen 
 that inspires their narrations. I was ever 
 so faintly surprised by their candid and 
 enthusiastic appreciation of the heroism of 
 the auxihary services. They were lyrical 
 about engine-drivers, telephone-repairers, 
 stretcher-bearers, and so on. The story 
 which had the most success concerned a 
 soldier (a schoolmaster) who in an engage- 
 ment got left between the opposing hues, a 
 quite defenceless mark for German rifles. 
 TVhen a bullet hit him, he cried, '"Five la 
 France!" When he was missed he kept 
 silent. He was hit again and again, and at 
 each wound he cried, ''Vive la Francer He 
 could not be killed. At last they turned a 
 
 [73] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 machine-gun on him and raked him from 
 head to foot. ''Vive la — '' 
 
 It was a long, windy, dusty drive to Arras. 
 The straight, worn roads of flinty chalk 
 
 passed for many miles through 
 ARRAS country where there was no unmili- 
 
 tary activity save that of the crops 
 pushing themselves up. Everything was 
 dedicated to the war. Only at one dirty 
 little industrial town did we see a large 
 crowd of men waiting after lunch to go into 
 a factory. These male civilians had a very 
 odd appearance; it was as though they had 
 been left out of the war by accident, or by 
 some surprising benevolence. One thought 
 first, "There must be some mistake here." 
 But there was probably no mistake. Those 
 men were doubtless in the immense machine. 
 After we had traversed a more attractive 
 agricultural town, with a town-hall whose 
 architecture showed that Flanders was not 
 very far off, the soil changed and the coun- 
 try grew more sylvan and delectable. And 
 the Sim shone hotly. Camps alternated with 
 orchards, and cows roamed in the camps and 
 
 [74] 
 
RUINS 
 
 also in the orchards. And among the trees 
 could be seen the blue draperies of women 
 at work. Then the wires of the field-tele- 
 phones and telegraphs on their elegantly 
 slim bamboos were running alongside us. 
 And once or twice, roughly painted on a bit 
 of bare wood, we saw the sign: ''Vers le 
 Front f' Why any sign should be necessary 
 for such a destination I could not imagine. 
 But perhaps humour had entered into the 
 matter. At length we perceived Arras in 
 the distance, and at a few kilometres it 
 looked rather like itself: it might have been 
 a living city. 
 
 When, however, you actually reach Arras 
 you cannot be deceived for an instant as to 
 what has happened to the place. It offers 
 none of the transient illusion of Rheims. 
 The first street you see is a desolation, empty 
 and sinister. Grimy curtains bulge out at 
 smashed windows. Everywhere the damage 
 of shells is visible. The roadway and the 
 pavements are Httered with bits of homes. 
 Grass flourishes among the bits. You pro- 
 ceed a httle further to a large, circular place j 
 
 [75] 
 
OYER THERE 
 
 once imposing. Every house in it presents 
 the same bhghted aspect. There is no urban 
 stir. But in the brief intervals of the deaf- 
 ening cannonade can be heard one sound — 
 bhnds and curtains fluttering against empty 
 window-frames, and perhaps the idle, faint 
 banging of a loose shutter. Not even a cat 
 walks. We are alone, we and the small 
 group of Staff Officers who are acting as 
 our hosts. We feel like thieves, like dese- 
 crators, impiously prying. 
 
 At the other side of the place a shell has 
 dropped before a house and sliced away all 
 its front. On the ground floor is the drawing- 
 room. Above that is the bedroom, with the 
 bed made and the white linen smoothly 
 showing. The marvel is that the bed, with 
 all the other furniture, does not slide down 
 the sloping floor into the street. But every- 
 thing remains moveless and placid. The 
 bedroom is like a show. It might be the 
 bedroom of some famous man exposed to 
 worshipping tourists at sixpence a head. A 
 few chairs have fallen out of the house, and 
 they lie topsy-turvy in the street amid the 
 
 [76] 
 
RUINS 
 
 debris; no one has thought to touch them. 
 In all directions thoroughfares branch forth, 
 silent, grass-grown, and ruined. 
 
 "You see the strong fortress I have !" says 
 the Commanding Officer with genial sar- 
 casm. "You notice its high military value. 
 It is open at every end. You can walk into 
 it as easily as into a windmill. And yet they 
 bombard it. Yesterday they fired twenty 
 projectiles a minute for an hour into the 
 town. A performance absolutely useless! 
 Simple destruction! But they are like 
 that!" 
 
 So we went forward further into the city, 
 and saw sights still stranger. Of one house 
 nothing but the roof was left, the roof made 
 a trivimphal arch. EA^erywhere potted 
 plants, boxed against walls or suspended 
 from window-frames, were freshly bloom- 
 ing. All the streets were covered with 
 powdered glass. In many streets telegraph 
 and telephone wires hung in thick festoons 
 like abandoned webs of spiders, or curled 
 themselves round the feet; continually one 
 had to be extricating oneself from them. 
 
 [77] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 Continually came the hollow sound of things 
 falling and slipping within the smashed in- 
 teriors behind the fa9ades. And then came 
 the sound of a baby crying. For this city 
 is not, after all, iminhabited. We saw a 
 woman coming out of her house and care- 
 fully locking the door behind her. Was she 
 locking it against shells, or against burglars ? 
 Observe those pipes rising through gratings 
 in the pavement, and blue smoke issuing 
 therefrom. Those pipes are the outward 
 sign that such inhabitants as remain have 
 transformed their cellars into drawing-rooms 
 and bedrooms. We descended into one such 
 home. The real drawing-room, on the 
 ground-floor, had been invaded by a shell. 
 In that apartment richly carved furniture 
 was mixed up with pieces of wall and pieces 
 of curtain under a thick layer of white dust. 
 But the underground home, with its arched 
 roof and aspect of extreme solidity, was tidy 
 and very snugly complete in all its arrange- 
 ments, and the dark entrance to it well pro- 
 tected against the hazards of bombardment. 
 "Nevertheless^," said the master of the 
 
 [78] 
 
RUINS 
 
 home, "a 210-mm. shell would penetrate 
 everything. It would be the end." 
 
 He threw up his hands with a nonchalant 
 gesture. He was a fatalist worthy of his 
 city, which is now being besieged and ruined 
 not for the first time. The Vandals (I 
 mean the original Vandals) laid waste Arras 
 again and again. Then the Franks took it. 
 Then, in the ninth century, the Normans 
 ravaged it; and then Charles the Simple; 
 and then Lothair; and then Hugh Capet. 
 In the fifteenth century Charles VI. be- 
 sieged it for seven weeks, and did not take 
 it. Under Louis XI. it was atrociously 
 outraged. It revolted, and was retaken by 
 assault, its walls razed, its citizens expatri- 
 ated, and its name changed. Useless ! The 
 name returned, and the citizens. At the end 
 of the fifteenth century it fell under Spanish 
 rule, and had no kind of peace whatever 
 until, after another siege by a large French 
 army, it was regained by France in 1640. 
 Fourteen years later the House of Austria 
 had yet another try for it, and the Arch- 
 duke Leopold laid siege to the city. He 
 
 [79] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 lost 7000 men, 64 guns, 3000 horses, and all 
 his transport, and fled. (Last August was 
 the first August in two hundred and sixty 
 years which has not witnessed a municipal 
 fete in celebration of this affair.) Since 
 then Arras has had a tolerably quiet time, 
 except during the Revolution. It suffered 
 nothing in 1870. It now suffers. And ap- 
 parently those inhabitants who have stood 
 fast have not forgotten how to suffer; his- 
 tory must be in their veins. 
 
 In the street where we first noticed the 
 stove-pipes sprouting from the pavement, 
 we saw a postman in the regulation costume 
 of the French postman, with the regulation 
 black, shiny wallet-box hanging over his 
 stomach, and the regulation pen behind his 
 ear, smartly delivering letters from house to 
 house. He did not knock at the doors; he 
 just stuck the letters through the empty 
 window- frames. He was a truly remark- 
 able sight. 
 
 Then we arrived by a curved street at the 
 Cathedral of St. Vaast. St. Vaast, who 
 preached Christianity after it had been for- 
 
 [80] 
 
INTERIOR OF ARRAS CATHEDRAL BOMBARDED AND ON FIRE 
 
 "Photographs and 'pictures of Arras Cathedral 
 ought to be cherished by German commanders, for 
 they have accomplished nothing more austerely 
 picturesque, more religiously impressive, more 
 idiotically sacrilegious, more exquisitely futile, than 
 their achievement here.'' [Page 81] 
 
RUINS 
 
 gotten in Arras, is all over the district in 
 the nomenclature of places. Nobody among 
 the dilettanti has a good word to say for 
 the Cathedral, which was built in the latter 
 half of the eighteenth and the first half of 
 the nineteenth centuries, and which exhibits ' 
 a kind of simple baroque style, with Corin- 
 thian pillars in two storeys. But Arras 
 Cathedral is the most majestic and striking 
 ruin at the Front. It is superlatively well 
 placed on an eminence by itself, and its 
 dimensions are tremendous. It towers over 
 the city far more imposingly than Chartres 
 Cathedral towers over Chartres. The pale 
 simplicity of its enormous lines and surfaces 
 renders it better suited for the martyrdom 
 of bombardment than any Gothic building 
 could possibly be. The wounds are clearly 
 visible on its flat f a9ades, uncomplicated by 
 much carving and statuary. They are ter- 
 rific wounds, yet they do not appreciably 
 impair the ensemble of the fane. Photo- 
 graphs and pictures of Arras Cathedral 
 ought to be cherished by German com- 
 manders, for they have accomplished nothing 
 
 [81] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 more austerely picturesque, more religiously 
 impressive, more idiotically sacrilegious, 
 more exquisitely futile than their achieve- 
 ment here. And they are adding to it 
 weekly. As a spectacle, the Cathedral of 
 Rheims cannot compare with the Cathedral 
 of Arras. 
 
 In the north transept a 325-mm. shell has 
 knocked a clean hole through which a masto- 
 don might wriggle. Just opposite this 
 transept, amid universal wreckage, a cafe 
 is miraculously preserved. Its glass, mugs, 
 counters, chairs, and ornaments are all there, 
 covered with white dust, exactly as they 
 were left one night. You could put your 
 hand through a window aperture and pick 
 up a glass. Close by, the lovely rafter-work 
 of an old house is exposed, and, within, a 
 beam has fallen from the roof to the ground. 
 This beam is burning. The flames are in- 
 dustriously eating away at it, like a tiger 
 gnawing in tranquil content at its prey which 
 it has dragged to a place of concealment. 
 There are other fires in Arras, and have 
 been for some days. But what are you to 
 
 [82] 
 
RUINS 
 
 do? A step further on is a greengrocer's 
 shop, open and doing business. 
 
 We gradually circled round the Cathedral 
 until we arrived at the Town Hall, built in 
 the sixteenth century, very carefully re- 
 stored in the nineteenth, and knocked to 
 pieces in the twentieth. We approached it 
 from the back, and could not immediately 
 perceive what had happened to it, for later 
 erections have clustered round it, and some 
 of these still existed in their main outlines. 
 In a great courtyard stood an automobile, 
 which certainly had not moved for months. 
 It was a wreck, overgrown with rust and 
 pustules. This automobile well symbolised 
 the desolation, open and concealed, by which 
 it was surrounded. A touchingly forlorn 
 thing, dead and deaf to the never-ceasing, 
 ever-reverberating chorus of the guns! 
 
 To the right of the Town Hall, looking 
 at it from the rear, we saw a curving double 
 row of mounds of brick, stone, and refuse. 
 Understand: these had no resemblance to 
 houses ; they had no resemblance to anything 
 whatever except mounds of brick, stone, and 
 
 [83] 
 
OYER THERE 
 
 refuse. The sight of them acutely tickled 
 my curiosity. "What is this?" 
 
 "It is the principal business street in 
 Arras." 
 
 The mind could picture it at once — one of 
 those narrow, winding streets which in 
 ancient cities perpetuate the most ancient 
 habits of the citizens, maintaining their com- 
 mercial pre-eminence in the face of all town- 
 planning ; a street leading to the Town Hall ; 
 a dark street full of jewellers' shops and 
 ornamented women and correctness and the 
 triumph of correctness; a street of the 
 "best" shops, of high rents, of famous names, 
 of picturesque signs; a street where the 
 wheels of traffic were continually inter- 
 locking, but a street which would not, under 
 any consideration, have widened itself by 
 a single foot, because its narrowness was 
 part of its prestige. Well, German gunnery 
 has brought that street to an end past all 
 resuscitation. It may be rebuilt — it will 
 never be the same street. 
 
 "What's the name of the street?" I asked. 
 
 None of the officers in the party could 
 
 [84] 
 
RUINS 
 
 recall the name of the principal business 
 street in Arras, and there was no citizen 
 within hail. The very name had gone, like 
 the forms of the houses. I have since 
 searched for it in guides, encyclopasdias, and 
 plans; but it has escaped me — ^withdrawn 
 and lost, for me, in the depths of history. 
 
 The street had suffered, not at all on its 
 own account, but because it happened to be 
 in the hne of fire of the Town Hall. It 
 merely received some portion of the bless- 
 ings which were intended for the To^vn Hall, 
 but which overshot their mark. The Town 
 Hall (like the Cathedrals here and at 
 Rheims) had no military interest or value, 
 but it was the finest thing in Arras, the most 
 loved thing, an irreplaceable thing; and 
 therefore the Germans made a set at it, as 
 they made a set at the Cathedrals. It is just 
 as if, having got an aim on a soldier's baby, 
 they had started to pick off its hands and 
 feet, saying to the soldier: "Yield, or we 
 will finish your baby." Either the military 
 ratiocination is thus, or the deed is simple 
 lunacy. 
 
 • [85] 
 
OYER THERE 
 
 When we had walked round to the front 
 of the Town Hall we were able to judge to 
 what extent the beautiful building had 
 monopolised the interest of the Germans. 
 The Town Hall stands at the head of a 
 magnificent and enormous arcaded square, 
 uniform in architecture, and no doubt dating 
 from the Spanish occupation. Seeing this 
 square, and its scarcely smaller sister a little 
 further on, you realise that indeed you are 
 in a noble city. The square had hardly been 
 touched by the bombardment. There had 
 been no shells to waste on the square while 
 the more precious Town Hall had one stone 
 left upon another. From the lower end of 
 the square, sheltered from the rain by the 
 arcade, I made a rough sketch of what re- 
 mains of the Town Hall. Comparing this 
 sketch with an engraved view taken from 
 exactly the same spot, one can see graphic- 
 ally what had occurred. A few arches of 
 the ground-floor colonnade had survived in 
 outline. Of the upper part of the fa9ade 
 nothing was left save a fragment of wall 
 showing two window-holes. The rest of the 
 
 [86] 
 
RUINS 
 
 fa9ade and the whole of the roof, was abol- 
 ished. The later building attached to the 
 left of the facade had completely disap- 
 peared. The carved masonry of the earlier 
 building to the right of the facade had sur- 
 vived in a state of severe mutilation. The 
 belfry which, rising immediately behind the 
 Town Hall, was once the highest belfry in 
 France (nearly 250 feet), had vanished. 
 The stump of it, jagged like the stump of a 
 broken tooth, obstinately persisted, sticking 
 itself up to a level a few feet higher than 
 the former level of the crest of the roof. 
 The vast ruin was heaped about with refuse. 
 Arras is not in Germany. It is in France. 
 I mention this fact because it is notorious 
 that Germany is engaged in a defensive war, 
 and in a war for the upholding of the highest 
 civilisation. The Germans came all the way 
 across Belgium, and thus far into France, 
 in order to defend themselves against attack. 
 They defaced and destroyed all the beauties 
 of Arras, and transformed it into a scene 
 of desolation unsurpassed in France, so that 
 the highest civihsation might remain secure 
 
 [87] 
 
OVEE THERE 
 
 and their own hearths intact. One wonders 
 what the Germans would have done had 
 they been fighting, not a war of defence and 
 civiHsation, but a war of conquest and bar- 
 barism. The conjecture may, perhaps, 
 legitimately occupy the brains of citizens. 
 In any case, the French Government would 
 do well to invite to such places as Arras, 
 Soissons, and Senlis groups of Mayors of 
 the cities of all countries, so that these august 
 magistrates may behold for themselves and 
 realise in their souls what defensive war and 
 the highest civilisation actually do mean 
 when they come to the point. 
 
 Personally, I am against a policy of re- 
 prisals, and yet I do not see how Germany 
 can truly appreciate what she has done un- 
 less an object-lesson is created for her out 
 of one of her own cities. And she emphatic- 
 ally ought to appreciate what she has done. 
 One city would suffice. If, at the end of the 
 war, Cologne were left as Arras was when I 
 visited it, a definite process of education 
 would have been accomplished in the Teu- 
 tonic mind. The event would be hard on 
 
 [88] 
 
THE RUINED NAVE OF SOISSONS CATHEDRAL 
 
 ''The French Government would do well to invite 
 to such 'places as Arras, Soissons and Senlis groups 
 of Mayors of the cities of all countries, so that these 
 august magistrates may behold for themselves and 
 realize in their souls what defensive war and the 
 highest civilization actually do mean when they 
 come to the point" [Page 88] 
 
RUINS 
 
 Cologne, but not harder than the other 
 event has been on Arras. Moreover, it is 
 held, I believe, that the misfortunes of war 
 bring out all that is finest in the character 
 of a nation, and that therefore war, with 
 its sweet accompaniments, is a good and a 
 necessary thing. I am against a policy of 
 reprisals, and yet — such is human nature — 
 having seen Arras, I would honestly give a 
 year's income to see Cologne in the same 
 condition. And to the end of my life I shall 
 feel cheated if Cologne or some similar Ger- 
 man town is not in fact ultimately reduced 
 to the same condition. This state of mind 
 comes of seeing things with your own eyes. 
 Proceeding, we walked through a mile or 
 two of streets in which not one house was 
 inhabited nor undamaged. Some of these 
 streets had been swept, so that at the first 
 glance they seemed to be streets where all 
 the citizens were indoors, reflecting behind 
 drawn blinds and closed shutters upon some 
 incredible happening. But there was no- 
 body indoors. There was nobody in the 
 whole quarter — only ourselves ; and we were 
 
 [89] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 very unhappy and unquiet in the sohtude, 
 Ahnost every window was broken; every 
 wall was chipped; chunks had been knocked 
 out of walls, and at intervals there was no 
 wall. One house showed the different 
 paperings of six rooms all completely ex- 
 posed to the gaze. The proprietor evidently 
 had a passion for anthracite stoves; in each 
 of the six fireplaces was an anthracite stove, 
 and none had fallen* The post-office was 
 shattered. 
 
 Then the railway station of Arras! A 
 comparatively new railway station, built by 
 the Compagnie du Nord in 1898. A rather 
 impressive railway station. The great 
 paved place in front of it was pitted with 
 shell-holes of various sizes. A shell had just 
 grazed the elaborate facade, shaving orna- 
 ments and mouldings off it. Every pane of 
 glass in it was smashed. All the ironwork 
 had a rich brown rust. The indications for 
 passengers were plainly visible. Here you 
 must take your ticket ; here you must register 
 your baggage; here you must wait. We 
 could look through the station as through 
 
 [90] 
 
RUINS 
 
 the ribs of a skeleton. The stilhiess of it 
 under the rain and under the echoes of the 
 tireless artillery was horrible. It was the 
 most unnatural, ghostly, ghastly railway 
 station one could imagine. As within the 
 station, so on the platforms. All the glass 
 of the shelters for passengers was broken to 
 little bits; the ironwork thickly encrusted. 
 The signals were unutterably forlorn in 
 their ruin. And on the lines themselves 
 rampant vegetation had grown four feet 
 high — a conquering jungle. The defence 
 of German soil is a mighty and a far-reach- 
 ing affair. 
 
 This was on July 7, 1915. 
 
 [91] 
 
CHAPTER FOUR 
 AT GRIPS 
 
 / 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 AT GRIPS 
 
 I HAVE before referred to the apparent 
 vagueness and casualness of war on its 
 
 present scarcely conceivable 
 AKTiLLERY scale. When you are with a 
 
 Staff Officer, you see almost 
 everything. I doubt not that certain mat- 
 ters are hidden from you; but, broadly 
 speaking, you do see all that is to be seen. 
 Into the mind of the General, which con- 
 ceals the strategy that is to make history, of 
 course you cannot peer. The General is full 
 of interesting talk about the past and about 
 the present, but about the future he breathes 
 no word. If he is near the centre of the 
 front he will tell you blandly, in answer to 
 your question, that a great movement may 
 not improbably be expected at the wings. 
 If he is at either of the wings he will tell 
 you blandly that a great movement may not 
 improbably be expected at the centre. You 
 
 [95] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 are not disappointed at his attitude, because 
 you feel when putting them that such ques- 
 tions as yours deserve such answers as his. 
 But you are assuredly disappointed at not 
 being able to comprehend even the present 
 — what is going on around you, under your 
 eyes, deafening your ears. 
 
 For example, I hear the sound of guns. I 
 do not mean the general sound of guns, 
 which is practically continuous round the 
 horizon, but the particular sound of some 
 specific group of guns. I ask about them. 
 Sometimes even Staff Officers may hesitate 
 before deciding whether they are enemy 
 guns or French guns. As a rule, the civilian 
 distinguishes an enemy shot by the sizzling, 
 affrighting sound of the projectile as it 
 rushes through the air towards him ; whereas 
 the French projectile, rushing away from 
 him, is out of hearing before the noise of the 
 gun's explosion has left his ears. But I may 
 be almost equidistant between a group of 
 German and a group of French guns. 
 
 When I have learnt what the guns are 
 and their calibre, and, perhaps, even their 
 
 [96] 
 
AT GRIPS 
 
 approximate situation on the large-scale 
 Staff map, I am not much nearer the realisa- 
 tion of them. Actually to find them might 
 be half a day's work, and when I have found 
 them I have simply found several pieces of 
 mechanism each hidden in a kind of hut, 
 functioning quite privately and disconnect- 
 edly by the aid of a few perspiring men. 
 The affair is not like shooting at anything. 
 A polished missile is shoved into the gun. 
 ... A horrid bang — the missile has disap- 
 peared, has simply gone. Where it has gone, 
 what it has done, nobody in the hut seems 
 to care. There is a telephone close by, but 
 only numbers and formula — and perhaps 
 an occasional rebuke — come out of the tele- 
 phone, in response to which the perspiring 
 men make minute adjustments in the gun 
 or in the next missile. 
 
 Of the target I am absolutely ignorant, 
 and so are the perspiring men. I am free 
 to go forth and look for the target. It is 
 pointed out to me. It may be a building or 
 a group of buildings; it may be something 
 else. At best, it is nothing but a distant 
 
 [97] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 spot on a highly complex countryside. I 
 see a faint puff of smoke, seemingly as 
 harmless as a feather momentarily floating. 
 And I think: Can any reasonable person 
 expect that those men with that noisy con- 
 trivance in the enclosed hut away back shall 
 plant a mass of metal into that far-off tiny 
 red patch of masonry lost in the vast land- 
 scape? And, even if by chance they do, for 
 what reason has that particular patch been 
 selected? What influence could its destruc- 
 tion have on the mighty course of the 
 struggle? . . . Thus it is that war seems 
 vague and casual, because a mere fragment 
 of it defeats the imagination, and the bits 
 of even the fragment cannot be fitted to- 
 gether. Why, I have stood in the first-line 
 trench itself and heard a fusillade all round 
 me, and yet have seen nothing and under- 
 stood nothing of the action! 
 
 ***** 
 
 It is the same with the movements of 
 troops. For example, I slept in a small 
 town behind the front, and I was wakened 
 up, not, as often, by an aeroplane, but by a 
 
 [98] 
 
AT GRIPS 
 
 tremendous shaking and throbbing of the 
 hotel. This went on for a long time, from 
 
 just after dawn till about six 
 AEMiES IN o'clock, when it stopped, only 
 MOVEMENT to recommence after a few 
 
 minutes. I got up, and found 
 that, in addition to the hotel, the whole 
 town was shaking and throbbing. A regi- 
 ment was passing through it in auto-buses. 
 Each auto-bus held about thirty men, and 
 the vehicles rattled after one another at a 
 distance of at most thirty yards. The auto- 
 buses were painted the colour of battle-ships, 
 and were absolutely uniform except that 
 some had permanent and some only tem- 
 porary roofs, and some had mica windows 
 and some only holes in the sides. All car- 
 ried the same number of soldiers, and in all 
 the rifles were stacked in precisely the same 
 fashion. When one auto-bus stopped, all 
 stopped, and the soldiers waved and smiled 
 to girls at windows and in the street. The 
 entire town had begun its day. 'No matter 
 how early you arise in these towns, the town 
 has always begun its day. 
 
 [99] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 V" 
 
 The soldiers in their pale-blue uniforms 
 were young, lively, high-spirited, and very 
 dusty ; their moustaches, hair, and ears were 
 noticeably coated with dust. Evidently 
 they had been travelling for hours. The 
 auto-buses kept appearing out of the sun- 
 shot dust-cloud at the end of the town, and 
 disappearing round the curve by the Town 
 Hall. Occasionally an officer's automobile, 
 or a car with a couple of nurses, would inter- 
 vene momentarily ; and then more and more 
 and more auto-buses, and still more. The 
 impression given is that the entire French 
 Army is passing through the town. The 
 rattle and the throbbing and the shaking 
 get on my nerves. At last come two break- 
 down-vans, and the procession is finished. 
 I cannot believe that it is really finished, but 
 it is ; and the silence is incredible. . . . Well, 
 I have seen only a couple of regiments go 
 by. Out of the hundreds of regiments in 
 the French Army, just two! But whence 
 they had come, what they had done, whither 
 they were travelling, what they were in- 
 tended to do — ^nobody could tell me. They 
 
 [100] 
 
AT GBIPS 
 
 had an air as casual and vague and aimless 
 as a flight of birds across a landscape. 
 
 There were more picturesque pilgrimages 
 than that. One of the most picturesque and 
 touching spectacles I saw at the front was 
 the march of a regiment of the line mto 
 another little country town on a very fine 
 summer morning. First came the regi- 
 mental hand. The brass instruments were 
 tarnished; the musicians had all sorts of 
 paper packages tied to their knapsacks. 
 Besides being musicians they were real 
 soldiers, in war-stained uniforms. They 
 marched with an air of fatigue. But the 
 tune they played was bright enough. Fol- 
 lowed some cyclists, keeping pace with the 
 marchers. Then an officer on a horse. Then 
 companies of the regiment. The stocks of 
 many of the rifles were wrapped m dirty 
 rags. Every man carried all that was his in 
 the campaign, including a pair of field- 
 glasses. Every man was piled up with im- 
 pedimenta—broken, torn, soiled and cobbled 
 impedimenta. And every man was very, 
 very tired. A young officer on foot could 
 
 [101] 
 
OVER THEEE 
 
 scarcely walk. He moved in a kind of 
 trance, and each step was difficult. He may 
 have been half asleep. At intervals a tri- 
 angular sign was borne aloft — red, blue, or 
 some other tint. These signs indicated the 
 positions of the different companies in the 
 trenches. (Needless to say that the regi- 
 ment had come during the night from a long 
 spell of the trenches — but what trenches?) 
 Then came the gorgeous regimental colours, 
 and every soldier in the street saluted them, 
 and every civilian raised his hat. 
 
 I noticed more and more that the men 
 were exhausted, were at the limit of their 
 endurance. Then passed a group which was 
 quite fresh. A Red Cross detachment! No 
 doubt they had had very little to do. After 
 them a few horses, grey and white; and 
 then field-kitchens and equipment-carts. 
 And then a machine-gun on a horse's back; 
 others in carts; pack-mules with ammuni- 
 tion-boxes; several more machine-gun sec- 
 tions. And then more field-kitchens. In 
 one of these the next meal was actually pre- 
 paring, and steam rose from under a great 
 
 [ 102 ] 
 
AT GRIPS 
 
 iron lid. On every cart was a spare wheel 
 for emergencies ; the hub of every wheel was 
 plaited round with straw; the harness was 
 partly of leather and partly of rope ending 
 in iron hooks. Later came a long Red Cross 
 van, and after it another field-kitchen en- 
 cumbered with bags and raw meat and 
 strange oddments, and through the inter- 
 stices of the pile, creeping among bags and 
 raw meat, steam gently moimted, for a meal 
 was maturing in that perambulating kitchen 
 also. Lastly, came a cart full of stretchers 
 and field-hospital apparatus. The regiment, 
 its music still faintly audible, had gone by — 
 self-contained, self-supporting. There was 
 no showiness of a review, but the normal 
 functioning, the actual dailiness, of a line 
 regiment as it lives strenuously in the midst 
 of war. My desire was that the young 
 officer in a trance should find a good bed 
 instantly. The whole thing was fine ; it was 
 pathetic; and, above all, it was mysterious. 
 What was the part of that regiment in the 
 gigantic tactics of Joffre? 
 
 ^ y^ y^ ^ y^ 
 
 [103] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 However, after a short experience at the 
 front one realises that though the conduct 
 
 of the campaign may be mys- 
 THE terious, it is neither vague nor 
 
 CONSTANT casual. I remember penetrat- 
 VTATCH ing through a large factory into 
 
 a small village which consti- 
 tuted one of the latest French conquests. 
 An officer who had seen the spot just after 
 it was taken, and before it was "organised," 
 described to me the appearance of the men 
 with their sunken eyes and blackened skins 
 on the day of victory. They were all very 
 cheerful when I saw them; but how alert, 
 how apprehensive, how watchful ! I felt that 
 I was in a place where anything might 
 happen at any moment. The village and 
 the factory were a maze of trenches, re- 
 doubts, caves, stairs up and stairs down. 
 Machine-guns, barbed wire, enfilading de- 
 vices were all ready. When we climbed to 
 an attic-floor to look at the German posi- 
 tions, which were not fifty yards away, the 
 Commandant was in a fever till we came 
 down again, lest the Germans might spy us 
 
 [ 104 ] 
 
AT GRIPS 
 
 and shell his soldiers. He did not so much 
 mind them shelling us, but he objected to 
 them shelling his men. We came down the 
 damaged stairs in safety. 
 
 A way had been knocked longitudinally 
 through a whole row of cottages. We went 
 along this — it was a lane of watchful figures 
 — and then it was whispered to us not to talk, 
 for the Germans might hear ! And we peered 
 into mines and burrowed and crawled. We 
 disappeared into long subterranean passages 
 and emerged among a lot of soldiers gaily 
 eating as they stood. Close by were a group 
 of men practising with hand-grenades made 
 harmless for the occasion. I followed the 
 Commandant round a corner, and we gazed 
 at I forget what. "Don't stay here," said 
 the Commandant. I moved away. A second 
 after I had moved a bullet struck the wall 
 where I had been standing. The entire at- 
 mosphere of the place, with its imminent 
 sense of danger from an invisible enemy and 
 fierce expectation of damaging that enemy, 
 brought home to me the grand essential truth 
 of the front, namely, that the antagonists 
 
 [105] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 are continually at grips, like wrestlers, and 
 straining every muscle to obtain the slightest 
 advantage. "Casual" would be the very last 
 adjective to apply to those activities. 
 
 Once, after a roundabout tour on foot, 
 one of the Staff Captains ordered an auto- 
 mobile to meet us at the end of a certain 
 road. Part of this road was exposed to 
 German artillery four or five miles off. No 
 sooner had the car come down the road than 
 we heard the fearsome sizzling of an ap- 
 proaching shell. We saw the shell burst 
 before the sound of the sizzling had ceased. 
 Then came the roar of the explosion. The 
 shell was a 77-mm. high-explosive. It fell 
 out of nowhere on the road. The German 
 artillery methodically searched the exposed 
 portion of the road for about half-an-hour. 
 The shells dropped on it or close by it at 
 intervals of two minutes, and they were 
 planted at even distances of about a hundred 
 yards up and down the slope. I watched 
 the operation from a dug-out close by. It 
 was an exact and a rather terrifying opera- 
 tion. It showed that the invisible Germans 
 
 [ 106] 
 
AT GRIPS 
 
 were letting nothing whatever go by; but it 
 did seem to me to be a fine waste of ammu- 
 nition, and a very stupid appHcation of a 
 scientific ideal ; for while shelling it the Ger- 
 mans must have noticed that there was 
 nothing at all on the road. We naturally 
 decided not to go up that road in the car, 
 but to skulk through a wood and meet the 
 car in a place of safety. The car had, sooner 
 or later, to go up the road, because there 
 was not another road. The Commandant 
 who was with us was a very seasoned ofiicer, 
 and he regarded all military duties as abso- 
 lute duties. The car must return along that 
 road. Therefore, let it go. .The fact that it 
 was a car serving solely for the convenience 
 of civilians did not influence him. It was a 
 military car, driven by a soldier. 
 
 "You may as well go at once," he said to 
 the chauffeur. "We will assist at your 
 agony. . . . What do you say?" he laugh- 
 ingly questioned a subordinate. 
 
 "Ah! My Commandant," said the junior 
 ofiicer cautiously, "when it is a question of 
 the service — " 
 
 [107] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 We should naturally have protested 
 against the chauffeur adventuring upon the 
 shell-swept road for our convenience; but 
 he was diplomatic enough to postpone the 
 journey. After a time the shelling ceased, 
 and he passed in safety. He told us when 
 we met him later for the drive home that 
 there were five large holes in the road. 
 
 On another occasion, when we were tramp- 
 ing through interminable communication- 
 trenches on a slope, a single rash exposure 
 of two of our figures above the parapet of 
 the trench drew down upon us a bombard- 
 ment of high-explosive. For myself, I was 
 completely exhausted by the excursion, 
 which was nearing its end, and also I was 
 faint from hunger. But immediately the 
 horrible sizzling sound overhead and an ex- 
 plosion just in front made it plain to me 
 that we were to suffer for a moment's indis- 
 cretion, I felt neither fatigue nor hunger. 
 The searching shells fell nearer to us. We 
 ran in couples, with a fair distance between 
 each couple, according to instructions, along 
 the rough, sinuous inequalities of the deep 
 
 [ 108 ] 
 
AT GRIPS 
 
 trench. After each visitation we had to lie 
 still and count five till all the fragments of 
 shell had come to rest. At last a shell seemed 
 to drop right upon me. The earth shook 
 under me. My eyes and nose were affected 
 by the fumes of the explosion. But the 
 shell had not dropped right upon me. It 
 had dropped a few yards to the left. A 
 trench is a wonderful contrivance. Imme- 
 diately afterwards, a friend picked up in 
 the trench one of the warm shots of the 
 charge. It was a many-facetted ball, beau- 
 tifully made, and calculated to produce the 
 maximum wound. This was the last shell 
 to fall. We were safe. But we realised 
 once again, and more profoundly, that there 
 is nothing casual in the conduct of war. 
 
 ^ ^ ^ ^ illlt 
 
 At no place was the continuously intense 
 character of the struggle — like that of 
 two leviathan wrestlers ever straining their 
 hardest at grips — ^more effectually brought 
 home to me than in the region known now 
 familiarly to the whole world as ISTotre Dame 
 de Lorette, from the little chapel that stood 
 
 [109] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 on one part of it. An exceedingly ugly 
 little chapel it was, according to the picture- 
 postcards. There are thou- 
 NOTRE DAME sands of widows and orphans 
 DE LORETTE Wearing black and regretting 
 the past and trembling about 
 the future to-day simply because thu in- 
 vaders had to be made to give up that 
 religious edifice which they had turned to 
 other uses. 
 
 The high, thickly wooded land behind the 
 front was very elaborately organised for 
 living either above ground or under ground, 
 according to the circumstances of the day. 
 To describe the organisation would be im- 
 politic. But it included every dodge. And 
 the stores, entombed in safety, comprised 
 all things. I remember, for example, stacks 
 of hundreds of lamp-chimneys. Naught 
 lacked to the completeness of the scene of 
 war. There were even prisoners. I saw 
 two young Germans under guard in a cabin. 
 They said that they had got lost in the 
 labyrinth of trenches, and taken a wrong 
 turning. And I believe they had. One was 
 
 [110] 
 
RUINS OF THE HOTEL DE VILLE, ARRAS 
 
 ""The Town Hall (like the Cathedrals here and at 
 Rheims) had no military interest or value, hut it 
 was the finest thing in Arras, the most loved thing, 
 an irreplaceable thing." [Page 85] 
 
AT GRIPS 
 
 a Red Cross man — probably a medical stu- 
 dent before, with wine and song and boast- 
 ings, he joined his Gott, his Kaiser, and his 
 comrades in the great mission of civilisation 
 across Belgimn. He was dusty and tired, 
 and he looked gloomily at the earthen floor 
 of the cabin. Nevertheless, he had a good 
 carriage and a passably intelligent face, and 
 he was rather handsome. I sympathised 
 with this 3^outh, and I do not think that he 
 was glad to be a prisoner. Some people 
 can go and stare at prisoners, and wreak 
 an idle curiosity upon them. I cannot. A 
 glance, rather surreptitious, and I must walk 
 away. Their humiliation humihates me, 
 even be they Prussians of the most offensive 
 variety. 
 
 A httle later we saw another prisoner 
 being brought in — a miserable, tuberculous 
 youth with a nervous trick of the face, thin, 
 very dirty, enfeebled, worn out; his uni- 
 form torn, stained, bullet-pierced, and 
 threadbare. Somebody had given him a 
 large himk of bread, which he had put within 
 the lining of his tunic ; it bulged out in front 
 
 [111] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 like a paunch. Art officer stopped to ques- 
 tion him, and while the cross-examination 
 was proceeding a curio-hunting soldier came 
 up behind and cut a button off the tunic. 
 We learnt that the lad was twenty-one years 
 of age, and that he had been called up in 
 December, 1914. Before assisting in the 
 conquest of France he was employed in a 
 paper factory. He tried to exhibit gloom, 
 but it was impossible for him quite to con- 
 ceal his satisfaction in the fact that for him 
 the fighting was over. The wretched boy 
 had had just about enough of world- 
 dominion, and he was ready to let the Hohen- 
 zollerns and Junkers finish up the enterprise 
 as best they could without his aid. No 
 doubt, some woman was his mother. It ap- 
 peared to me that he could not live long, 
 and that the woman in question might never 
 see him again. But every ideal must have 
 its victims; and bereavement, which counts 
 chief among the well-known advantageous 
 moral disciplines of war, is, of course, good 
 for a woman's soul. Besides, that woman 
 would be convinced that her son died glori- 
 
 [112] 
 
AT GRIPS 
 
 ously in defence of an attacked Fatherland. 
 W^ien we had got clear of prisoners and 
 of the innumerable minor tools of war, we 
 came to something essential — ^namely, a 
 map. This map, which was shown to us 
 rather casually in the middle of a wood, was 
 a very big map, and by means of different 
 coloured chalks it displayed the ground 
 taken from the Germans month by month. 
 The yellow line showed the advance up to 
 May; the blue line showed the further ad- 
 vance up to June; and fresh marks in red 
 showed graphically a further wresting which 
 had occurred only in the previous night. The 
 blue line was like the mark of a tide on a 
 chart; in certain places it had nearly sur- 
 rounded a German position, and shortly the 
 Germans would have to retire from that 
 position or be cut off. Fam_ous names 
 abounded on that map — such as Souchez, 
 Ablain St. Nazaire, St. Eloi, Fonds de 
 Buval. Being on a very large scale, the 
 map covered a comparatively small section 
 of the front ; but, so far as it went, it was a 
 map to be gazed upon with legitimate pride. 
 
 [113] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 The officers regarded it proudly. Eagerly 
 they indicated where the main pressures 
 were, and where new pressures would come 
 later. Their very muscles seemed to be 
 strained in the ardour of their terrific inten- 
 tion to push out and destroy the invader. 
 While admitting, as all the officers I met 
 admitted, the great military qualities of the 
 enemy, they held towards him a more defi- 
 nitely contemptuous attitude than I could 
 discover elsewhere. "When the Boches 
 attack us," said one of them, "we drive them 
 back to their trench, and we take that trench. 
 Thus we advance." But, for them, there 
 ^ was Boche and Boche. It was the Bavarians 
 whom they most respected. They deemed 
 the Prussians markedly inferior as fighters 
 to the Bavarians. The Prussians would not 
 hold firm when seriously menaced. The 
 Prussians, in a word, would not "stick it." 
 Such was the unanimous verdict here. 
 
 Out beyond the wood, on the hillside, in 
 the communication-trenches and other 
 trenches, we were enabled to comprehend the 
 true significance of that phrase uttered so 
 
 [114] 
 
AT GRIPS 
 
 carelessly by newspaper-readers — Notre 
 Dame de Lorette. The whole of the ground 
 was in heaps. There was no spot, literally, 
 on which a shell had not burst. Vegetation 
 was quite at an end. The shells seemed to 
 have sterilised the earth. There was not a 
 tree, not a bush, not a blade of any sort, not 
 a root. Even the rankest weeds refused to 
 sprout in the perfect desolation. And this 
 was the incomparable soil of France. The 
 trenches meandered for miles through the 
 pitted brown slopes, and nothing could be 
 seen from them but vast encumbrances of 
 barbed wire. Knotted metal heaped on the 
 unyielding earth! 
 
 The solitude of the communication- 
 trenches was appalling, and the continuous 
 roar of the French seventy-fives over our 
 heads did not alleviate it. In the other 
 trenches, however, was much humanity, 
 some of it sleeping in deep, obscure retreats, 
 but most of it acutely alive and interested 
 in everything. A Captain with a shabby 
 uniform and a strong Southern accent told 
 us how on March 9 he and his men defended 
 
 [115] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 their trench in water up to the waist and 
 lumps of ice in it knocking against their 
 bodies. 
 
 "I was summoned to surrender," he 
 laughed. "I did not surrender. We had 
 twenty killed and twenty-four with frost- 
 bitten feet as a result of that affair. Yes — 
 March 9." 
 
 March 9, 1915, obviously divided that 
 officer's life into two parts, and not un- 
 naturally ! 
 
 A little further on we might hear an 
 officer speaking somewhat ardently into a 
 telephone — 
 
 "What are they doing with that gun? 
 They are shooting all over the shop. Tell 
 them exactly — " 
 
 Still a little further on, and another 
 officer would lead us to a spot where we 
 could get glimpses of the plain. What a 
 plain! Pit-heads, superb vegetation, and 
 ruined villages — tragic villages illustrating 
 the glories and the transcendent common- 
 sense of war and invasion. That place over 
 there is Souchez — familiar in all mouths 
 
 [116] 
 
AT GRIPS 
 
 from Arkansas to Moscow for six months 
 past. What an object! Look at St. Eloi! 
 Look at Angres! Look at Neuville St. 
 Vaast! And look at Ablain St. Nazah^e, 
 the nearest of all! The village of Ablain 
 St. Nazaire seems to consist now chiefly of 
 exposed and blackened rafters; what is left 
 of the church sticks up precisely like a little 
 bleached bone. A vision horrible and in- 
 credible in the immense luxuriance of the 
 plain! The French have got Ablain St. 
 Nazaire. We may go to Ablain St. Nazaire 
 ourselves if we will accept the risks of shell- 
 ing. Soldiers were seriously wounded there 
 on that very day, for we saw them being 
 carried therefrom on stretchers towards the 
 motor-ambulance and the hospital. 
 
 After more walking of a very circuitous 
 nature, I noticed a few bricks in the monot- 
 onous expanse of dwarf earth-mounds made 
 by shells. 
 
 "Hello!" I said. "Was there a cottage 
 here?" 
 
 No! What I had discovered was the 
 illustrious chapel of Notre Dame de Lorette. 
 
 [117] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 Then we were in a German trench which 
 the French had taken and transformed into 
 one of their own trenches by turning its 
 face. It had a more massive air than the 
 average French trench, and its cellarage, if 
 I may use this civilian word, was deeper 
 than that of any French trench. The officers 
 said that often a German trench was taken 
 before the men resting in those profound 
 sleeping-holes could get to the surface, and 
 that therefore they only emerged in order 
 to be killed or captured. 
 
 After more heavy trudging we came to 
 trenches abandoned by the Germans and not 
 employed by the French, as the front had 
 moved far beyond them. The sides were 
 dilapidated. Old shirts, bits of uniform, 
 ends of straps, damaged field-glass cases, 
 broken rifles, useless grenades lay all about. 
 Here and there was a puddle of greenish 
 water. Millions of flies, many of a sinister 
 bright burnished green, were busily swarm- 
 ing. The forlornness of these trenches was 
 heartrending. It was the most dreadful 
 thing thatT saw at the front, surpassing the 
 
 [ 118 ] 
 
AT GRIPS 
 
 forlornness of any destroyed village what- 
 soever. And at intervals in the ghastly 
 residue of war arose a smell unlike any other 
 smell. ... A leg could be seen sticking out 
 of the side of the trench. We smelt a num- 
 ber of these smells, and saw a number of 
 these legs. Each leg was a fine leg, well- 
 clad, and superbly shod in almost new boots 
 with nail-protected soles. Each leg was a 
 human leg attached to a himian body, and 
 at the other end of the body was presumably 
 a face crushed in the earth. Two strokes 
 with a pick, and the corpses might have been 
 excavated and decently interred. But not 
 one had been touched. Buried in frenzied 
 haste by amateur, imperilled grave-diggers 
 with a military purpose, these dead men 
 decayed at leisure amid the scrap-heap, the 
 cess-pit, the infernal squalor which once had 
 been a neat, clean, scientific German earth- 
 work, and which still earlier had been part 
 of a fair countryside. The French had 
 more urgent jobs on hand than the sepulture 
 of these victims of a caste and an ambition. 
 So they liquefied into corruption in their 
 
 [119] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 everlasting boots, proving that there is noth- 
 ing hke leather. They were a symbol. With 
 alacrity we left them to get forward to the 
 alert, straining life of war. 
 
 [ 120] 
 
CHAPTER FIVE 
 THE BRITISH LINES 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE BRITISH LINES 
 
 You should imagine a large plain, but 
 not an empty plain, nor a plain entirely 
 
 without hills. There are a few 
 THE hills, including at least one very 
 PLAIN fine eminence (an agreeable old 
 
 town on the top), with excellent 
 views of the expanse. The expanse is con- 
 siderably diversified. In the first place it 
 is very well wooded; in the second place it 
 is very well cultivated; and in the third 
 place it is by no means uninhabited. Vil- 
 lages abound in it; and small market towns 
 are not far off each other. These places 
 are connected by plenty of roads (often 
 paved) and canals, and by quite an average 
 mileage of railways. See the plain from 
 above, and the chief effect is one of trees. 
 The rounded tops of trees everywhere ob- 
 scure the view, and out of them church- 
 towers stick up; other architecture is only 
 
 [123] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 glimpsed. The general tints are green and 
 grey, and the sky as a rule is grey to match. 
 Finally the difference between Northern 
 France and Southern Belgium is marked 
 only by the language of shop and cafe signs ; 
 in most respects the two sections of the 
 Front resemble each other with extraor- 
 dinary exactitude. 
 
 The British occupation — which is marked 
 of course by high and impressive cordiality 
 — is at once superficially striking and subtly 
 profound. 
 
 "What do you call your dog?" I asked a 
 ragamuffin who was playing with a nice little 
 terrier in a village street where we ate an 
 al fresco meal of jam-sandwiches with a 
 motor-car for a buffet. 
 
 He answered shyly, but with pride: 
 
 "Tommy." 
 
 The whole country-side is criss-crossed 
 with field telegraph and telephone wires. 
 Still more spectacular, everywhere there are 
 traffic directions. And these directions are 
 very large and very curt. "Motor-lorries 
 dead slow," you see in immense characters 
 
 [124] 
 
THE BRITISH LINES 
 
 in the midst of the foreign scene. And at all 
 the awkward street corners in the towns a 
 soldier directs the traffic. Not merely in 
 the towns, but in many and many a rural 
 road you come across a rival of the Strand. 
 For the traffic is tremendous, and it is almost 
 all mechanical transport. You cannot go far 
 without encountering, not one or two, but 
 dozens and scores of motor-lorries, which, 
 after the leviathan manner of motor-lorries, 
 occupy as much of the road as they can. 
 When a string of these gets mixed up with 
 motor-cars, a few despatch-riders on motor- 
 cycles, a peasant's cart, and a company on 
 the march, the result easily surpasses Picca- 
 dilly Circus just before the curtains are 
 rising in West End theatres. Blocks may 
 and do occur at any moment. Out of a 
 peaceful rustic soHtude you may run round 
 a curve straight into a block. The motor- 
 lorries constitute the difficulty, not always 
 because they are a size too large for the 
 country, but sometimes because of the 
 human nature of Tommies. The rule is that 
 on each motor-lorry two Tommies shall ride 
 
 [125] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 in front and one behind. The solitary one 
 behind is cut off from mankind, and accord- 
 ingly his gregarious instinct not infrequently 
 makes him nip on to the front seat in search 
 of companionship. When he is established 
 there impatient traffic in the rear may 
 screech and roar in vain for a pathway; 
 nothing is so deaf as a motor-lorry. The 
 situation has no disadvantage for the trio 
 in front of the motor-lorry until a Staff 
 Officer's car happens to be inconvenienced. 
 Then, when the Staff Officer does get level, 
 there is a short, sharp scene, a dead silence, 
 and the offender creeps back, a stricken 
 
 sinner, to his proper post. 
 
 ***** 
 
 The encumbered and busy roads, and the 
 towns crammed with vehicles and vibrating 
 
 with military activity, produce 
 GENERALS upon you sucli an overwhelming 
 AND impression of a vast and com- 
 
 STAFFS plex organisation that your 
 
 thought rushes instantly to the 
 supreme controller of that organisation, the 
 man ultiraately responsible for all of it. He 
 
 [126] 
 
THE BRITISH LINES 
 
 does not make himself invisible. It becomes 
 known that he will see you at a certain hour. 
 You arrive a few minutes before that hour. 
 The building is spacious, and its Gallic 
 aspect is intensified by the pure Anglo- 
 Saxonism of its terrific inhabitants. In a 
 large outer office you are presented to the 
 various brains of the Expeditionary Force, 
 all members of the General Staff — famous 
 names among them, celebrities, specialists, 
 illustrious with long renown. They walk 
 in and out, and they sit smoking and chat- 
 ting, as if none of them was anybody in 
 particular. And as a fact, you find it a 
 little difficult to appreciate them at their 
 lawful worth, because you are aware that 
 in the next room, behind those double doors, 
 is he at whose nod the greatest among them 
 tremble. 
 
 "The Commander-in-Chief will see you." 
 You go forward, and I defy you not to 
 be daunted. 
 
 The inner chamber has been a drawing- 
 room. It still is partially a drawing-room. 
 The silk panels on the walls have remained, 
 
 [127] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 and in one corner a grand piano lingers. 
 In the middle is a plain table bearing a map 
 on a huge scale. There he is, the legendary 
 figure. You at last have proof that he 
 exists. He comes towards the door to meet 
 you. A thick-set man, not tall, with small 
 hands and feet, and finger-nails full of 
 character. He has a short white moustache, 
 and very light-coloured eyes set in a ruddy 
 complexion. His chin is noticeable. He is 
 not a bit dandacal. He speaks quietly and 
 grimly and reflectively. He is a preoccupied 
 man. He walks a little to and fro, pausing 
 between his short, sparse sentences. When 
 he talks of the Germans he has a way of 
 settling his head and neck with a slight de- 
 fiant shake well between his shoulders. I 
 have seen the gesture in experienced boxers 
 and in men of business when openly or im- 
 plicitly challenged. It is just as if he had 
 said: "Wait a bit! I shall get even with 
 that lot — and let no one imagine the con- 
 trary!" From the personality of the man 
 there emanates all the time a pugnacious and 
 fierce doggedness. . . . After he has form- 
 
 [128] 
 
THE BRITISH LINES 
 
 ally welcomed you into the meshes of his 
 intimidating organisation, and made a few 
 general observations, he says, in a new tone : 
 "Well — ," and you depart. And as you 
 pass out of the building the thought in your 
 mind is: 
 
 "I have seen him !" 
 
 After the Commander-in-Chief there are 
 two other outstanding and separately exist- 
 ing notabilities in connection with the Gen- 
 eral Staff. One is the Quartermaster- 
 General, who superintends the supply of all 
 material; and the other is the Adjutant- 
 General, who superintends the supply of 
 men. With the latter is that formidable 
 instrument of authority, the Grand Provost 
 Marshal, who superintends behaviour and 
 has the power of life and death. Each of 
 these has his Staff, and each is housed simi- 
 larly to the Commander-in-Chief. Then 
 each Army (for there is more than one army 
 functioning as a distinct entity) — each 
 Army has its Commander with his Staff. 
 And each Corps of each Army has its Com- 
 mander with his Staff. And each Division 
 
 [ 129 ] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 of each Corps of each Army has its Com- 
 mander with his Staff. And each Brigade 
 of each Division of each Corps of each Army 
 has its Commander with his Staff; but 
 though I met several Brigadier- Generals, I 
 never saw one at his headquarters with his 
 Staff. I somehow could not penetrate lower 
 than the entity of a Division. I lunched, 
 had tea, and dined at the headquarters of 
 various of these Staffs, with a General as 
 host. They were all admirably housed, and 
 their outward circumstances showed a 
 marked similarity. The most memorable 
 thing about them was their unending 
 industry. 
 
 "You have a beautiful garden," I said to 
 one General. 
 
 "Yes," he said. "I have never been into 
 it." 
 
 He told me that he rose at six and went 
 to bed at midnight. 
 
 As soon as coffee is over after dinner, and 
 before cigars are over, the General will say : 
 
 "I don't wish to seem inhospitable, but — " 
 
 And a few minutes later you may see a 
 [ 130] 
 
THE BRITISH LINES 
 
 large lighted limousine moving off into the 
 night, bearing Staff Officers to their offices 
 for the evening seance of work which ends 
 at twelve o'clock or thereabouts. 
 
 The complexity and volume of work which 
 goes on at even a Divisional Headquarters, 
 having dominion over about twenty thou- 
 sand full-grown males, may be imagined; 
 and that the bulk of such work is of a busi- 
 ness nature, including much tiresome routine, 
 is certain. Of the strictly military labours 
 of Headquarters, that which most agreeably 
 strikes the civilian is the photography and 
 the map-work. I saw thousands of maps. 
 I inspected thick files of maps all showing 
 the same square of country under different 
 militarv conditions at different dates. And 
 I learnt that special maps are regularly cir- 
 culated among all field officers. . . . 
 
 The fitting-out and repairing sheds of 
 the Royal Flying Corps were superb and 
 complete constructions, at once practical 
 and very elegant. I visited them in the 
 midst of a storm. The equipment was pro- 
 digious; the output was prodigious; the 
 
 [131] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 organisation was scientific; and the Staff 
 was both congenial and impressive. When 
 one sees these birdcages full of birds and 
 comprehends the spirit of flight, one is less 
 surprised at the unimaginable feats which 
 are daily performed over there in the sky 
 northwards and eastwards. I saw a man 
 who flew over Ghent twice a week with the 
 regularity of a train. He had never been 
 seriously hit. These airmen have a curious 
 physical advantage. The noise of their own 
 engine, it is said, prevents them from hear- 
 ing the explosions of the shrapnel aimed at 
 
 them. 
 
 ***** 
 
 The British soldier in France and Flan- 
 ders is not a self-supporting body. He 
 
 needs support, and a great 
 SUPPLY^ ETC. deal of support. I once saw 
 
 his day's rations set forth on 
 a tray, and it seemed to me that I could not 
 have consumed them in a week of good 
 appetite. The round of meat is flanked by 
 plenteous bacon, jam, cheese, and bread. In 
 addition there are vegetables, tea, sugar, 
 
 [132] 
 
THE BRITISH LINES 
 
 salt, and condiments, with occasional butter ; 
 and once a week come two ounces of tobacco 
 and a box of matches for each ounce. But 
 the formidable item is the meat. And then 
 the British soldier wants more than food; 
 he wants, for instance, fuel, letters, cleanli- 
 ness ; he wants clothing, and all the innumer- 
 able instruments and implements of war. 
 He wants regularly, and all the time. 
 
 Hence you have to imagine wide steady 
 streams of all manner of things converging 
 upon Northern France not only from 
 Britain but from round about the globe. 
 The force of an imperative demand draws 
 them powerfully in, night and day, as a 
 magnet might. It is impossible to trace 
 exactly either the direction or the separate 
 constituents of these great streams of neces- 
 saries. But it is possible to catch them, or 
 at any rate one of them, at the most inter- 
 esting point of its course : the point at which 
 the stream, made up of many converging 
 streams, divides suddenly and becomes many 
 streams again. 
 
 That point is the rail-head. 
 [133] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 Now a military rail-head is merely an 
 ordinary average little railway station, with 
 a spacious yard. There is nothing super- 
 ficially romantic about it. It does not even 
 mark the end of a line of railway. I have 
 in mind one which served as the Headquar- 
 ters of a Divisional Supply Column. The 
 organism served just one division — out of 
 the very many divisions in France and 
 Flanders. It was under the command of a 
 Major. This Major, though of course in 
 khaki and employing the same language and 
 general code as a regimental Major, was 
 not a bit like a regimental Major. He was 
 no more like a regimental Major than I am 
 myself. He had a different mentality, out- 
 look, preoccupation. He was a man in 
 business. He received orders — I use the 
 word in the business sense — from the 
 Brigades of the Division; and those orders, 
 ever varying, had to be executed and de- 
 livered within thirty-six hours. Quite prob- 
 ably he had never seen a trench; I should 
 be neither surprised nor pained to learn that 
 he could only hit a haystack with a revolver 
 
 [134] 
 
THE BRITISH LINES 
 
 by throwing the revolver at the haystack. 
 His subordinates resembled him. Strategy, 
 artillery-mathematics, the dash of infantry 
 charges — these matters were not a bit in 
 their line. Nevertheless, when you read in 
 a despatch that during a prolonged action 
 supplies went regularly up to the Front 
 under heavy fire, you may guess that forti- 
 tude and courage are considerably in their 
 line. These officers think about their arriv- 
 ing trains, and about emptying them in the 
 shortest space of time ; and they think about 
 their motor-lorries and the condition thereof ; 
 and they pass their lives in checking lists and 
 in giving receipts for things and taking 
 receipts for things. Their honour may be 
 in a receipt. And all this is the very basis 
 of war. 
 
 My Major handled everything required 
 for his division except water and ammuni- 
 tion. He would have a train full of multi- 
 farious provender, and another train full 
 of miscellanies — from field-guns to field- 
 kitchens — with letters from wives and sweet- 
 hearts in between. And all these things came 
 
 [ 135] 
 
OYER THERE 
 
 to him up the line of railway out of the sea 
 simply because he asked for them and was 
 ready to give a receipt for them. He was 
 not concerned with the magic underlying 
 their appearance at his little rail-head; he 
 only cared about the train being on time, 
 and the lorries being in first-class running 
 order. He sprayed out in beneficent streams 
 from his rail-head tons of stuff every day. 
 Every day he sent out two hundred and 
 eighty bags of postal matter to the men 
 beyond. The polish on the metallic portions 
 of his numerous motor-lorries was uncanny. 
 You might hft a bonnet and see the bright 
 parts of the engine glittering like the brass 
 of a yacht. Dandyism of the Army Service 
 Corps ! 
 
 An important part of the organism of 
 the rail-head is the Railway Construction 
 Section Train. Lines may have to be 
 doubled. The Railway Construction Sec- 
 tion Train doubles them; it will make new 
 railways at the rate of several miles a day; 
 it is self-contained, being simultaneously a 
 depot, a workshop, and a barracks. 
 
 [136] 
 
THE BRITISH LINES 
 
 Driving along a road you are liable to see 
 rough signs nailed to trees, with such words 
 on them as "Forage," "Groceries," "Meat," 
 "Bread," etc. Wait a little, and you may 
 watch the Divisional Supply at a further 
 stage. A stream of motor-lorries — one of 
 the streams sprayed out from the rail-head 
 — will halt at those trees and miload, and 
 the stuff which they unload will disappear 
 like a dream and an illusion. One moment 
 the meat and the bread and all the succu- 
 lences are there by the roadside, each by its 
 proper tree, and the next they are gone, 
 spirited away to camps and billets and 
 trenches. Proceed further, and you may 
 have the luck to see the mutton which was 
 frozen in New Zealand sizzling in an earth- 
 oven in a field christened b}^ the soldiers 
 with some such name as Hampstead Heath. 
 The roasted mutton is a very fine and a 
 very appetising sight. But what quanti- 
 ties of it! And what an antique way of 
 cooking ! 
 
 As regards the non-edible suppKes, the 
 engineer's park will stir your imagination. 
 
 [137] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 You can discern every device in connection 
 with warfare. (To describe them might be 
 indiscreet, — it would assuredly be too 
 lengthy. ) . . . Telephones such as certainly 
 you have never seen! And helmets such as 
 you have never seen! Indeed, everything 
 that a soldier in full work can require, ex- 
 cept ammunition. 
 
 The ammunition-train in process of being 
 unloaded is a fearsome affair. You may 
 see all conceivable ammunition, from rifle- 
 cartridges to a shell whose weight is liable to 
 break through the floors of lorries, all on 
 one train. And not merely ammunition, but 
 a thousand pyrotechnical and other devices; 
 and varied bombs. An officer unscrews a 
 cap on a metal contraption, and throws it 
 down, and it begins to fizz away in the most 
 disconcerting manner. And you feel that 
 all these shells, all these other devices, are 
 simply straining to go off. They are like 
 things secretly and terribly alive, waiting 
 the tiny gesture which will set them free. 
 Officers, handling destruction with the non- 
 chalance of a woman handling a hat, may 
 
 [138] 
 
THE BRITISH LINES 
 
 say what they hke — the ammunition train 
 is to my mind an unsafe neighbour. And 
 the thought of all the sheer brain-power 
 which has gone to the invention and perfect- 
 ing of those propulsive and explosive ma- 
 chines causes you to wonder whether you 
 
 yourself possess a brain at all. 
 
 ***** 
 
 You can find everything in the British 
 lines except the British Army. The same 
 is to be said of the French lines; 
 THE but the indiscoverability of the 
 
 HIDDEN British Army is relatively much 
 ARMY more striking, by reason of the 
 greater richness and complexity 
 of the British auxiliary services. You see 
 soldiers — you see soldiers everywhere; but 
 the immense majority of them are obviously 
 engaged in attending to the material needs 
 of other soldiers, which other soldiers, the 
 fighters, you do not see — or see only in tiny 
 detachments or in single units. 
 
 Thus I went for a very long walk, up 
 such hills and down such dales as the country 
 can show, tramping with a General through 
 
 [139] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 exhausting communication-trenches, in order 
 to discover two soldiers, an officer and his 
 man; and even they were not actual fighters. 
 The officer lived in a dug-out with a very 
 fine telescope for sole companion. I was 
 told that none but the General commanding 
 had the right to take me to that dug-out. 
 It contained the officer's bed, the day's 
 newspapers, the telescope, a few oddments 
 hung on pegs pushed into the earthen walls, 
 and, of equal importance with the telescope, 
 a telephone. Occasionally the telephone 
 faintly buzzed, and a very faint, indistin- 
 guishable murmur came out of it. But the 
 orderly ignored this symptom, explaining 
 that it only meant that somebody else was 
 talking to somebody else. I had the impres- 
 sion of a mysterious underground life going 
 on all around me. The officer's telescopic 
 business was to keep an eye on a particular 
 section of the German front, and report 
 everything. The section of front comprised 
 sundry features extremely well known by 
 reputation to British newspaper readers. I 
 must say that the reality of them was dis- 
 
 [ 140 ] 
 

 SHELL FIRE OVER ABLAIN ST NAZAIRE 
 
 "The village of Ahlain St. Nazaire seems to con- 
 sist now chiefly of exposed and blackened rafters; 
 what is left of the church sticks np precisely like a 
 little bleached bone." [Page 117] 
 
THE BRITISH LINES 
 
 appointing. The inevitable thought was: 
 "Is it possible that so much killing has been 
 done for such trifling specks of earth?" The 
 officer made clear all details to us; he de- 
 scribed minutely the habits of the Germans 
 as he knew them. But about his own habits 
 not a word was said. He was not a human 
 being — he was an observer, eternally spying 
 through a small slit in the wall of the dug- 
 out. What he thought about when he was 
 not observing, whether his bed was hard, 
 how he got his meals, whether he was bored, 
 whether his letters came regularly, what his 
 moods were, what was his real opinion of 
 that dug-out as a regular home — these very 
 interesting matters were not even ap- 
 proached by us. He was a short, mild 
 officer, with a quiet voice. Still, after we 
 had shaken hands on parting, the General, 
 who had gone first, turned his bent head 
 under the concealing leafage, and nodded 
 and smiled with a quite particular cordial 
 friendliness. "Good afternoon. Blank," 
 said the General to the officer, and the warm 
 tone of his voice said : "You know — don't 
 
 [ 141 ] 
 
OVZE THEJffi 
 
 you. Blank ? — ^how much I appreciate you." 
 It was a transient revelation. As, swallowed 
 up in trenches, I trudged away from the 
 lonely officer, the General, resuming his 
 ordinarv worldlv tone, becran to talk about 
 London music-halls and Wish TV^-nne and 
 other artistes. 
 
 Then, on another occasion I actually saw 
 at least twenty fighting men I They were 
 not fighting, but they were pretending, 
 under dangerous conditions, to fight. They 
 had to practise the bombiag of a German 
 trench — with real bombs. The young officer 
 in charge explained to us the different Idnds 
 of bombs. *Tt's all quite safe," he said 
 casually, ''until I take this piu out." And 
 he took the pin out . . . We saw the Httle 
 procession of men that were to do the bomb- 
 incr. We saw the trench, with its traverses, 
 and we were shown just how it would be 
 bombed, traverse by traverse. We saw also 
 a ''crater" which was to be bombed and 
 stormed. And that was about all we did see. 
 The rest was chiefly heariug, because we had 
 to take shelter behind such shght eminences 
 
 [142] 
 
THE BRITISH LINXS 
 
 as a piece of ordinan- waste ground can 
 oflFer. Common wayfarers were kept out of 
 harm by sentries. We were instructed to 
 duck. We ducked. Bang I Bang I Bang! 
 Bang I Bang — Bang I Then the mosquito- 
 like whine of bits of projectile above our 
 heads I Then we ventured to look over, and 
 amid wisps of smoke the bombers were rush- 
 ing a traverse. Strange to say, none of them 
 was killed, or even wounded. 
 
 On still another occasion I saw a whole 
 brigade, five or six thousand men, with their 
 first-line transport, and two Generals with 
 implacable eyes watching them for faults. 
 It was a fine, very picturesque display of 
 Imperial mihtancy, but too marvellously 
 spick-and-span to produce any illusion of 
 war. So far as I was concerned, its cliief 
 use was to furnish a real conception of num- 
 bers. I calculated that if the whole British 
 Army passed before my eyes at the same 
 brisk rate as that sohtan' and splendid 
 brigade, I should have to stare at it night 
 and day for about three weeks, without sur- 
 cease for meals. This calculation only in- 
 
 [143] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 creased my astonishment at the obstinate 
 indiscoverabihty of the Army. 
 
 Once I did get the sensation of fighting 
 men existing in bulk. It was at the baths 
 of a new division — the New Army. I will 
 mention in passing that the real enthusiasm 
 of Generals concerning the qualities of the 
 New Army was most moving — and en- 
 heartening. 
 
 The baths establishment was very British 
 — ^much more British than any of those oper- 
 ating it perhaps imagined. Such a phe- 
 nomenon could probably be seen on no other 
 front. It had been contrived out of a fairly 
 large factory. It was in charge of a quite 
 young subaltern, no doubt anxious to go and 
 fight, but condemned indefinitely to the 
 functions of baths-keeper. In addition to 
 being a baths-keeper this young subaltern 
 was a laundry-manager; for when bathing 
 the soldiers left their underclothing and took 
 fresh. The laundry was very large; it em- 
 ployed numerous local women and girls at 
 four francs a day. It had huge hot drying- 
 rooms where the women and girls moved as 
 
 [ 144 ] 
 
THE BRITISH LINES 
 
 though the temperature was sixty degrees 
 instead of being over a hundred. All these 
 women and girls were beautiful, all had 
 charm, all were more or less ravishing — 
 simply because for days we had been living 
 in a harsh masculine world — a world of 
 motor-lorries, razors, trousers, hob-nailed 
 boots, maps, discipline, pure reason, and ex- 
 cessively few mirrors. . . . An interesting 
 item of the laundry was a glass-covered 
 museum of lousy shirts, product of pro- 
 longed trench-life in the earlier part of the 
 war, and held by experts to surpass all 
 records of the kind! 
 
 The baths themselves were huge and 
 simple, — a series of gigantic steaming vats 
 in which possibly a dozen men lathered 
 themselves at once. Here was fighting 
 humanity ; you could see it in every gesture. 
 The bathers, indeed, appeared to be more 
 numerous than they in fact were. Two hun- 
 dred and fifty could undress, bathe, and re- 
 clothe themselves in an hour, and twelve 
 hundred in a morning. Each man, of course, 
 would be free to take as many unofficial 
 
 [145] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 baths, in tin receptacles and so on, as he 
 could privately arrange for and as he felt 
 inclined for. Companies of dirty men 
 marching to the baths, and companies of 
 conceitedly clean men marching from the 
 baths, helped to strengthen the ever-growing 
 suspicion that a great Army must be hidden 
 somewhere in the neighbourhood. 
 
 Nevertheless, I still saw not the ultimate 
 destination of all those streams of supply 
 which I have described. 
 
 ■ale. .de. .alg. AtL jO^l 
 
 I had, however, noted a stream in the 
 contrary direction — that is, westwards and 
 southwards towards the Channel 
 WOUNDED and England. You can first 
 trace the beginnings of this 
 stream under the sound of the guns (which 
 you never see). A stretcher brought to a 
 temporary shelter by men whose other pro- 
 fession is to play regimental music ; a group 
 of men bending over a form in the shelter; 
 a glimpse of dressings and the appliances 
 necessary for tying up an artery or some 
 other absolutely urgent job. That shelter is 
 
 [146] 
 
THE BRITISH LINES 
 
 called the Aid Post. From it the horizontal 
 form goes to (2) the Advanced Dressing 
 Station, where more attention is given to 
 it; and thence to (3) the Field Ambulance 
 proper, where the case is really diagnosed 
 and provisionally classed. By this time 
 motor-ambulances have been much used; 
 and the stream, which was a trickle at the 
 Aid Post, has grown wider. 
 
 The next point (4) is the Casualty Clear- 
 ing Station. Casualty Clearing Stations 
 are imposing affairs. Not until the hori- 
 zontal form reaches them can an operation 
 in the full sense of the word be performed 
 upon it. The Clearing Station that I saw 
 could accommodate seven hundred cases, 
 and had held nearer eight hundred. It was 
 housed in an extensive public building. It 
 employed seven surgeons, and I forget how 
 many dressers. It had an abdominal ward, 
 where cases were kept until they could take 
 solid food ; and a head ward ; and an officers' 
 ward ; immense stores ; a Church of England 
 chapel; and a shoot down which mattresses 
 with patients thereon could be slid in case 
 
 [147] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 of fire. Nearly seven hundred operations 
 had been performed in it during the war. 
 Nevertheless, as the young Colonel in charge 
 said to me: "The function of a Clearing 
 Station is to clear. We keep the majority 
 of the cases only a few hours." Thence the 
 horizontal forms pass into (5) Ambulance 
 Trains. But besides Ambulance Trains 
 there are Ambulance barges, grand vessels 
 flying the Union Jack and the Red Cross, 
 with lifts, electric light, and an operating- 
 table. They are towed by a tug to the coast 
 through convenient canals. 
 
 You may catch the stream once more, and 
 at its fullest, in (6) the splendid hospitals 
 at Boulogne. At Boulogne the hospital 
 laundry work is such that it has overpowered 
 the town and it has to be sent to England. 
 But even at Boulogne, where the most solid 
 architecture, expensively transformed, gives 
 an air of utter permanency to the hospitals, 
 the watchword is still to clear, to pass the 
 cases on. The next stage (7) is the Hos- 
 pital-Ship, specially fitted out, waiting in 
 the harbour for its complement. When the 
 
 [148] 
 
THE BRITISH LINES 
 
 horizontal forms leave the ship they are in 
 England; they are among us, and the great 
 stream divides into many streams, just as 
 at the rail-head at the other end the great 
 stream of supply divides into many streams, 
 and is lost. . . . 
 
 Nor are men the only beings cared for. 
 One of the strangest things I saw at Bou- 
 logne was a horse-hospital, consisting of a 
 meadow of many acres. Those who imagine 
 that horses are not used in modern war 
 should see the thousands of horses tethered 
 in that meadow. Many if not most of them 
 were suffering from shell woimds, and the 
 sufferers were rather human. I saw a horse 
 operated on under chloroform. He refused 
 to come to after the operation was over, and 
 as I left he was being encouraged to do so 
 by movements of the limbs to induce respira- 
 tion. Impossible, after that, to think of 
 
 him as a mere horse ! 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 But before I left the British lines I did 
 manage to glimpse the British Army, the 
 mysterious sea into which all those streams 
 
 [149] 
 
OYER THERE 
 
 of supply fell and were swallowed up, and 
 from which trickled the hundreds of small 
 
 runlets of wounded that con- 
 THE ARMY Verged into the mighty stream 
 IN BEING of pain at Boulogne. ... I 
 
 passed by a number of wooden 
 causeways over water-logged ground and 
 each causeway had the name of some London 
 street, and at last I was stopped by a com- 
 plicated wall of sandbags with many curves 
 and involutions. To "dig in" on this par- 
 ticular landscape is impracticable, and hence 
 the "trenches" are above ground and sand- 
 bags are their walls. I looked through a 
 periscope and saw barbed wire and the 
 German positions. I was told not to stand in 
 such-and-such a place because it was ex- 
 posed. A long line of men moved about at 
 various jobs behind the rampart of sand- 
 bags; they were cheerfully ready to shoot, 
 but very few of them were actually in the 
 posture of shooting. A little further behind 
 gay young men seemed to be preparing food. 
 Here and there were little reposing places. 
 ... A mere line, almost matching the sand- 
 
 [150] 
 
THE BKITISH LINES 
 
 bags in colour! All the tremendous organ- 
 isation in the rear had been brought into 
 being solely for the material sustenance, the 
 direction, and the protection of this line! 
 The guns roared solely in its aid. For this 
 line existed the clearing stations and hos- 
 pitals in France and in Britain. I dare say 
 I saw about a quarter of a mile of it. The 
 Major in command of what I saw accom- 
 panied me some distance along the cause- 
 ways into comparative safety. As we were 
 parting he said: 
 
 "Well, what do you think of our 
 ^trenches'?" 
 
 In my preoccupied taciturnity I had per- 
 haps failed to realise that, interesting as his 
 "trenches" were to me, they must be far 
 more interesting to him, and that they ought 
 to have formed the subject of conversation. 
 
 "Fine!" I said. 
 
 And I hope my monosyllabic sincerity 
 satisfied him. 
 
 We shook hands, and he turned silently 
 away to the everlasting peril of his post. 
 His retreating figure was rather pathetic to 
 
 [151] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 me. Looking at it, I understood for the 
 first time what war in truth is. But I soon 
 began to wonder anxiously whether our 
 automobile would get safely past a certain 
 exposed spot on the high road. 
 
 [152] 
 
CHAPTER SIX 
 THE UNIQUE CITY 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE UNIQUE CITY 
 
 When we drew near Ypres we met a 
 civilian wagon laden with furniture of a 
 
 lower middle-class house, and 
 THE also with lengths of gilt pic- 
 
 ENTRANCE turc-framc moulding. There 
 
 was quite a lot of gilt in the 
 wagon. A strong, warm wind was blowing, 
 and the dust on the road and from the rail- 
 way track was very impleasant. The noise 
 of artillery persisted. As a fact, the wagon 
 was hurrying away with furniture and 
 picture-frame mouldings under fire. Several 
 times we were told not to Hnger here and not 
 to linger there, and the automobiles, emptied 
 of us, received very precise instructions 
 where to hide during our absence. We saw 
 a place where a shell had dropped on to 
 waste groimd at one side of the road, and 
 thrown up a mass of earth and stones on to 
 
 [ 155 ] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 the roof of an asylum on the other side of the 
 road. The building was unharmed ; the well= 
 paved surface of the road was perfect — it 
 had received no hurt ; but on the roof lay the 
 earth and stones. Still, we had almost no 
 feeling of danger. The chances were a 
 thousand to one that the picture-frame 
 maker would get safely away with his goods ; 
 and he did. But it seemed odd — to an 
 absurdly sensitive, non-Teutonic mind it 
 seemed somehow to lack justice — that the 
 picture-framer, after having been ruined, 
 must risk his life in order to snatch from the 
 catastrophe the debris of his career. Fur- 
 ther on, within the city itself, but near the 
 edge of it, two men were removing un- 
 injured planks from the upper floor of a 
 house; the planks were all there was in the 
 house to salve. I saw no other attempt to 
 make the best of a bad job, and, after I had 
 inspected the bad job, these two attempts 
 appeared heroic to the point of mere folly. 
 I had not been in Ypres for nearly twenty 
 years, and when I was last there the work of 
 restoring the historic buildings of the city 
 
 [156] 
 
THE UNIQUE CITY 
 
 was not started. (These restorations, espe- 
 cially to the Cloth Hall and the Cathedral 
 of St. Martin, were just about finished in 
 time for the opening of hostilities, and they 
 give yet another proof of the German con- 
 tention that Belgium, in conspiracy with 
 Britain, had deliberately prepared for the 
 war— and, indeed, wanted it !) The Grande 
 Place was quite recognisable. It is among 
 the largest pubhc squares in Europe, and 
 one of the very few into which you could 
 put a medium-sized Atlantic liner. There 
 is no square in London or (I think) New 
 York into which you could put a 10,000-ton 
 boat. A 15,000-ton affair, such as even the 
 Arabic, could be arranged diagonally in the 
 Grande Place at Ypres. 
 
 This Grande Place has seen history. In 
 the middle of the thirteenth century, whence 
 its chief edifices date, it was the centre of 
 one of the largest and busiest towns in 
 Europe, and a population of 200,000 
 weavers was apt to be uproarious in it. 
 Within three centuries a lack of compre- 
 hension of home politics and the simple 
 
 [157] 
 
OYER THERE 
 
 brigandage of foreign politics had reduced 
 Ypres to a population of 5000. In the seven- 
 teenth century Ypres fell four times. At 
 the beginning of the nineteenth century it 
 ceased to be a bishopric. In the middle of 
 the nineteenth century it ceased to be forti- 
 fied; and in the second decade of the twen- 
 tieth century it ceased to be inhabited. 
 Possessing 200,000 inhabitants in the thir- 
 teenth century, 5000 inhabitants in the six- 
 teenth, 17,400 inhabitants at the end of the 
 nineteenth century, it now possesses in- 
 habitants. It is uninhabited. It cannot be 
 inhabited. Scarcely two months before I 
 saw it, the city — I was told — ^had been full 
 of life; in the long period of calm which 
 followed the bombardment of the railway- 
 station quarter in November, 1914, the in- 
 habitants had taken courage, and many of 
 those who had fled from the first shells had 
 sidled back again with the most absurd hope 
 in their hearts. As late as the third week in 
 April the Grande Place was the regular 
 scene of commerce, and on market-days it 
 was dotted with stalls upon which were 
 
 [ 158 ] 
 
THE UNIQUE CITY 
 
 offered for sale such frivolous things as post- 
 cards displaying the damage done to the 
 railway-station quarter. 
 
 Then came the major bombardment, which 
 is not yet over. 
 
 Ajg. jjt s^ ^It d^ 
 
 You may obtain a just idea of the effects 
 of the major bombardment by adventuring 
 into the interior of the Cathe- 
 THE BIG dral of St. Martin. This 
 BUILDINGS Cathedral is chiefly thirteenth- 
 century work. Its tower, like 
 that of the Cathedral at Malines, had never 
 been completed — ^nor will it ever be, now — 
 but it is still, with the exception of the tower 
 of the Cloth Hall, the highest thing in Ypres. 
 The tower is a skeleton. As for the rest of 
 the building, it may be said that some of the 
 walls alone substantially remain. The choir 
 — the earliest part of the Cathedral — is en- 
 tirely unroofed, and its south wall has van- 
 ished. The apse has been blown clean out. 
 The Early Gothic nave is partly unroofed. 
 The transepts are unroofed, and of the glass 
 of the memorable rose window of the south 
 
 [159] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 transept not a trace is left — so far as I can 
 remember. 
 
 In the centre of the Cathedral, where the 
 transepts meet, is a vast heap of bricks, 
 stone, and powdery dirt. This heap rises 
 irregularly like a range of hills towards the 
 choir; it overspreads most of the immense 
 interior, occupying an area of, perhaps, from 
 15,000 to 20,000 square feet. In the choir it 
 rises to a height of six or seven yards. You 
 climb perilously over it as you might cross 
 the Alps. This incredible amorphous mass, 
 made up of millions of defaced architectural 
 fragments of all kinds, is the shattered body 
 of about half the Cathedral. I suppose that 
 the lovely carved choir-stalls are imbedded 
 somewhere within it. The grave of Jansen 
 is certainly at the bottom of it. The aspect 
 of the scene, with the sky above, the jagged 
 walls, the interrupted arches, and the dusty 
 piled mess all around, is intolerably desolate. 
 And it is made the more so by the bright 
 colours of the great altar, two-thirds of 
 which is standing, and the still brighter 
 colours of the organ, which still clings, ap- 
 
 [160] 
 
THE UNIQUE CITY 
 
 parently whole, to the north wall of the 
 choir. In the sacristy are collected gilt 
 candelabra and other altar-furniture, turned 
 yellow by the fumes of picric acid. At a 
 little distance the Cathedral, ruin though it 
 is, seems solid enough ; but when you are in it 
 the fear is upon you that the inconstant and 
 fragile remains of it may collapse about you 
 in a gust of wind a little rougher than usual. 
 
 You leave the outraged fane with relief. 
 And when you get outside you have an ex- 
 cellent opportunity of estimating the mech- 
 anism which brought about this admirable 
 triumph of destruction; for there is a hole 
 made by a 17-inch shell; it is at a moderate 
 estimate fifty feet across, and it has hap- 
 pened to tumble into a graveyard, so that the 
 hole is littered with the white bones of earlier 
 Christians. 
 
 The Cloth Hall was a more wonderful 
 thing than the Cathedral of St. Martin, 
 which, after all, was no better than dozens 
 of other cathedrals. There was only one 
 Cloth Hall of the rank of this one. It is 
 not easy to say whether or not the Cloth Hall 
 
 [161] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 still exists. Its celebrated three-storey 
 
 facade exists, with a huge hiatus in it to the 
 
 left of the middle, and, of course, minus all 
 
 glass. The entire facade seemed to me to be 
 
 leaning slightly forward ; I could not decide 
 
 whether this was an optical delusion or a 
 
 fact. The enormous central tower is knocked 
 
 to pieces, and yet conserves some remnant 
 
 of its original outlines; bits of scaffolding 
 
 on the sides of it stick out at a great height 
 
 like damaged matches. The slim corner 
 
 towers are scarcely hurt. Everything of 
 
 artistic value in the structure of the interior 
 
 has disappeared in a horrible confusion of 
 
 rubble. The eastern end of the Cloth Hall 
 
 used to be terminated by a small beautiful 
 
 Renaissance edifice called the Niewwerk, 
 
 dating from the seventeenth century. What 
 
 its use was I never knew ; but the ISTiewwerk 
 
 has vanished, and the Town Hall next door 
 
 has also vanished; broken walls, a few bits 
 
 of arched masonry, and heaps of refuse alone 
 
 indicate where these buildings stood in April 
 
 last. 
 
 ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 
 
 [162] 
 
THE UNIQUE CITY 
 
 So much for the two principal buildings 
 visible from the Grande Place. The Cloth 
 
 Hall is in the Grande Place, and 
 THE the Cathedral adjoins it. The 
 
 GRANDE only other fairly large building in 
 PLACE the Place is the Hopital de Notre 
 
 Dame at the north-east end. This 
 white-painted erection, with its ornamental 
 gilt sign, had continued substantially to 
 exist as a structural entity; it was defaced, 
 but not seriously. Every other building in 
 the place was smashed up. To walk right 
 round the Place is to walk nearly half a 
 mile; and along the entire length, with the 
 above exceptions, there was nothing but 
 mounds of rubbish and fragments of up- 
 standing walls. Here and there in your 
 perambulation you may detect an odour with 
 which certain trenches have already familiar- 
 ised you. Obstinate inhabitants were apt 
 to get buried in the cellars where they had 
 taken refuge. In one place what looked like 
 a colossal sewer had been uncovered. I 
 thought at the time that the sewer was some- 
 what large for a city of the size of Ypres, 
 
 [163] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 and it has since occurred to me that this 
 sewer may have been the ancient bed of the 
 stream Yperlee, which in some past period 
 was arched over. 
 
 "I want to make a rough sketch of all 
 this," I said to my companions in the middle 
 of the Grande Place, indicating the Cloth 
 Hall, and the Cathedral, and other grouped 
 ruins. The spectacle was, indeed, majestic 
 in the extreme, and if the British Govern- 
 ment has not had it officially photographed 
 in the finest possible manner, it has failed 
 in a very obvious duty ; detailed photographs 
 of Ypres ought to be distributed throughout 
 the world. 
 
 My companions left me to myself. I sat 
 down on the edge of a small shell-hole some 
 distance in front of the Hospital. I had been 
 advised not to remain too near the building 
 lest it might fall on me. The paved floor 
 of the Place stretched out around me like 
 a tremendous plain, seeming the vaster be- 
 cause my eyes were now so much nearer to 
 the level of it. On a bit of f a9ade to the left 
 the word "Cycle"^ stood out in large, black 
 
 [164] 
 
THE UNIQUE CITY 
 
 letters on a white ground. This word and 
 myself were the sole living things in the 
 Square. In the distance a cloud of smoke 
 up a street showed that a house was burning. 
 The other streets visible from where I sat 
 gave no sign whatever. The wind, strong 
 enough throughout my visit to the Front, 
 was now stronger than ever. All the 
 window-frames and doors in the Hospital 
 were straining and creaking in the wind. 
 The loud sound of guns never ceased. A 
 large British aeroplane hummed and buzzed 
 at a considerable height overhead. Dust 
 drove along. 
 
 I said to myself : "A shell might quite well 
 fall here any moment." 
 
 I was afraid. But I was less afraid of a 
 shell than of the intense loneliness. Rheims 
 was inhabited; Arras was inhabited. In 
 both cities there were postmen and news- 
 papers, shops, and even cafes. But in Ypres 
 there was nothing. Every street was a 
 desert ; every room in every house was empty. 
 Not a dog roamed in search of food. The 
 weight upon my heart was sickening. To 
 
 [ 165 ] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 avoid complications I had promised the Staff 
 Officer not to move from the Place until he 
 returned; neither of us had any desire to be 
 hunting for each other in the sinister laby- 
 rinth of the town's thoroughfares. I was, 
 therefore, a prisoner in the Place, con- 
 demned to solitary confinement. I ardently 
 wanted my companions to come back. . . . 
 Then I heard echoing sounds of voices and 
 footsteps. Two British soldiers appeared 
 round a corner and passed slowly along the 
 Square. In the immensity of the Square 
 they made very small figures. I had a wish 
 to accost them, but Englishmen do not do 
 these things, even in Ypres. They glanced 
 casually at me; I glanced casually at them, 
 carefully pretending that the circumstances 
 of my situation were entirely ordinary. 
 
 I felt safer while they were in view; but 
 when they had gone I was afraid again. I 
 was more than afraid; I was inexplicably 
 uneasy. I made the sketch simply because 
 I had said that I would make it. And as 
 soon as it was done, I jumped up out of the 
 hole and walked about, peering down streets 
 
 [166] 
 
THE UNIQUE CITY 
 
 for the reappearance of my friends. I was 
 very depressed, very irritable ; and I honestly 
 wished that I had never accepted any invi- 
 tation to visit the Front. I somehow thought 
 I might never get out of Ypres ahve. When 
 at length I caught sight of the Staff Officer 
 I felt instantly relieved. My depression, 
 however, remained for hours afterwards. 
 
 ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 
 
 Perhaps the chief street in Ypres is the 
 wide Rue de Lille, which runs from opposite 
 
 the Cloth Hall down to the Lille 
 STREETS Gate, and over the moat water 
 
 into the Lille road and on to the 
 German hnes. The Rue de Lille was espe- 
 cially famous for its fine old buildings. 
 There was the Hospice Belle, for old female 
 paupers of Ypres, built in the thirteenth 
 century. There was the Museum, formerly 
 the Hotel Merghelynck, not a very striking 
 edifice, but full of antiques of all kinds. 
 There was the Hospital of St. John, inter- 
 esting, but less interesting than the Hospital 
 of St. John at Bruges. There was the 
 Gothic Maison de Bois, right at the end of 
 
 [167] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 the street, with a rather wonderful frontage. 
 And there was the famous fourteenth-cen- 
 tury Steenen, which since my previous visit 
 had been turned into the post office. With 
 the exception of this Jast building, the whole 
 of the Rue de Lille, if my memory is right, 
 lay in ruins. The shattered post office was 
 splendidly upright and in appearance entire ; 
 but, for all I know, its interior may have 
 been destroyed by a shell through the roof. 
 Only the acacia-trees flourished, and the flies, 
 and the weeds between the stones of the 
 paving. The wind took up the dust from 
 the rubbish heaps which had been houses 
 and wreathed it against what bits of walls 
 still maintained the perpendicular. Here, 
 too, was the unforgettable odour, rising 
 through the interstices of the smashed 
 masonry which hid subterranean chambers. 
 
 We turned into a side-street of small 
 houses — probably the homes of lace-makers. 
 The street was too humble to be a mark for 
 the guns of the Germans, who, no doubt, 
 trained their artillery by the aid of a very 
 large scale municipal map on which every 
 
 [168] 
 
THE UNIQUE CITY 
 
 building was separately indicated. It would 
 seem impossible that a map of less than a 
 foot to a mile could enable them to produce 
 such wonderful results of carefully wanton 
 destruction. And the assumption must be 
 that the map was obtained from the local 
 authorities by some agent masquerading as 
 a citizen. I heard, indeed, that known citi- 
 zens of all the chief towns returned to their 
 towns or to the vicinity thereof in the uni- 
 form and with the pleasing manners of 
 German warriors. The organisation for 
 doing good to Belgium against Belgium's 
 will was an incomparable piece of chicane 
 and pure rascahty. Strange — Belgians 
 were long ago convinced that the visitation 
 was inevitably coming, and had fallen into 
 the habit of discussing it placidly over their 
 beer at nights. . . . 
 
 To return to the side-street. So far as 
 one could see, it had not received a dent, not 
 a scratch. Even the little windows of the 
 little red houses were by no means all broken. 
 All the front doors stood ajar. I hesitated 
 to walk in, for these houses seemed to be 
 
 [169] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 mysteriously protected by influences invis- 
 ible. But in the end the vulgar, yet perhaps 
 legitimate, curiosity of the sightseer, of the 
 professional reporter, drove me within the 
 doors. The houses were so modest that they 
 had no entrance-halls or lobbies. One passed 
 directly from the street into the parlour. 
 Apparently the parlours were completely 
 furnished. They were in an amazing dis- 
 order, but the furniture was there. And the 
 furnishings of all of them were alike, as the 
 furnishings of all the small houses of a street 
 in the Five Towns or in a cheap London 
 suburb. The ambition of these homes had 
 been to resemble one another. What one 
 had all must have. Under ordinary circum- 
 stances the powerful common instinct to 
 resemble is pitiable. But here it was abso- 
 lutely touching. 
 
 Everything was in these parlours. The 
 miserable, ugly ornaments, bought and 
 cherished and admired by the simple, were 
 on the mantelpieces. The drawers of the 
 mahogany and oak furniture had been 
 dragged open, but not emptied. The tiled 
 
 [170] 
 

 THE TOWER OF THE CLOTH HALL, YPRES 
 
 "The enormous central tower is knocked to pieces 
 and yet conserves some remnant of its original ovt- 
 lines; bits of scaffolding on the sides of it stick out 
 at a great height like damaged matches." [Page 
 162] 
 
THE UNIQUE CITY 
 
 floors were littered with clothes, with a 
 miscellany of odd possessions, with pots and 
 pans out of the kitchen and the scullery, 
 with bags and boxes. The accumulations 
 of lifetimes were displayed before me, and 
 it was almost possible to trace thcslow trans- 
 forming of young girls into brides, and 
 brides into mothers of broods. 
 
 Within the darkness of the interiors I 
 could discern the stairs. But I was held 
 back from the stairs. I could get no fur- 
 ther than the parlours, though the interest 
 of the upper floors must have been sur- 
 passing. . . . 
 
 So from house to house. I handled noth- 
 ing. Were not the military laws against 
 looting of the most drastic character ! And 
 at last I came to the end of the little street. 
 There are many such streets in Ypres. In 
 fact, the majority of the streets were like 
 that street. I did not visit them, but I have 
 no doubt that they were in the same condi- 
 tion. I do not say that the inhabitants fled 
 taking naught with them. They must ob- 
 viously have taken what they could, and 
 
 [ 171 ] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 what was at once most precious and most 
 portable. But they could have taken very 
 little. They departed breathless without 
 vehicles, and probably most of the adults 
 had children to carry or to lead. At one 
 moment the houses were homes, functioning 
 as such. An alarm, infectious like the 
 cholera, and at the next moment the deserted 
 houses became spiritless, degenerated into 
 intolerable museums for the amazement of 
 a representative of the American and the 
 British Press! Where the scurrying fami- 
 lies went to I never even inquired. Useless 
 to inquire. They just lost themselves on 
 the face of the earth, and were henceforth 
 known to mankind by the generic name of 
 "refugees" — such of them as managed to get 
 away alive. 
 
 After this the solitude of the suburbs, with 
 their maimed and rusting factories, their 
 stagnant canals, their empty lots, their high, 
 lusty weeds, their abolished railway and tram 
 stations, was a secondary matter leaving 
 practically no impression on the exhausted 
 sensibility. 
 
 [172] 
 
THE UNIQUE CITY 
 
 A few miles on the opposite sides of the 
 town were the German artillery positions, 
 with guns well calculated to destroy Cathe- 
 drals and Cloth Halls. Around these guns 
 were educated men who had spent years — 
 indeed, most of their lives — in the scientific 
 study of destruction. Under these men were 
 slaves who, solely for the purposes of de- 
 struction, had ceased to be the free citizens 
 they once were. These slaves were com- 
 pelled to carry out any order given to them, 
 under pain of death. They had, indeed, 
 been explicitly told on the highest earthly 
 authority that, if the order came to destroy 
 their fathers and their brothers, they must 
 destroy their fathers and their brothers : the 
 instruction was public and historic. . . . 
 
 The whole organism has worked, and 
 worked well, for the destruction of all that 
 was beautiful in Ypres, and for the break-up 
 of an honourable tradition extending over 
 at least eight centuries. The operation was 
 the direct result of an order. The order had 
 been carefully weighed and considered. The 
 successful execution of it brought joy into 
 
 [173] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 many hearts high and low. "Another shell 
 in the Cathedral!" And men shook hands 
 ecstatically around the excellent guns. "A 
 hole in the tower of the Cloth Hall." Gen- 
 eral rejoicing! "The population has fled, 
 and Ypres is a desert!" Inexpressible 
 enthusiasm among specially educated men, 
 from the highest to the lowest. So it must 
 have been. There was no hazard .about the 
 treatment of Ypres. The shells did not 
 come into Ypres out of nowhere. Each was 
 the climax of a long, deliberate effort 
 originating in the brains of the responsible 
 leaders. One is apt to forget all this. 
 
 "But," you say, "this is war, after all." 
 After all, it just is. 
 
 *^e, jSg^ jfe 3i» 
 
 *f* i> "«pf *l* 
 
 The future of Ypres exercises the mind, 
 Ypres is only one among many martyrs. 
 But, as matters stand at 
 THE FUTURE present, it is undoubtedly 
 the chief one. In proportion 
 to their size, scores of villages have suffered 
 as much as Ypres, and some have suffered 
 more. But no city of its mercantile, his- 
 
 [174] 
 
THE UNIQUE CITY 
 
 torical, and artistic importance has, up to 
 now, suffered in the same degree as Ypres. 
 Ypres is entitled to rank as the very symbol 
 of the German achievement in Belgium. It 
 stood upon the path to Calais; but that was 
 not its crime. Even if German guns had 
 not left one brick upon another in Ypres, 
 the path to Calais would not thereby have 
 been made any easier for the well-shod feet 
 of the apostles of might, for Ypres never 
 served as a military stronghold and could 
 not possibly have so served; and had the 
 Germans known how to beat the British 
 Army in front of Ypres, they could have 
 marched through the city as easily as a hyena 
 through a rice-crop. The crime of Ypres 
 was that it lay handy for the extreme irri- 
 tation of an army which, with three times 
 the men and three times the guns and thirty 
 times the vainglorious conceit, could not 
 shift the trifling force opposed to it last 
 autumn. Quite naturally the boasters were 
 enraged. In the end, something had to give 
 way. And the Cathedral and Cloth Hall 
 and other defenceless splendours of Ypres 
 
 [175] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 gave way, not the trenches. The yearners 
 after Calais did themselves no good by ex- 
 terminating fine architecture and breaking 
 up innocent homes, but they did experience 
 the relief of smashing something. Therein 
 lies the psychology of the affair of Ypres, 
 and the reason why the Ypres of history has 
 come to a sudden close. 
 
 In order to envisage the future of Ypres, 
 it is necessary to get a clear general concep- 
 tion of the .damage done to it. Ypres is not 
 destroyed. I should estimate that when I 
 saw it in July at least half the houses in it 
 were standing entire, and, though disfigured, 
 were capable of being rapidly repaired. 
 Thousands of the humble of Ypres could 
 return to their dwellings and resume home- 
 life there with little trouble, provided that 
 the economic situation was fairly favourable 
 — and, of course, sooner or later the economic 
 situation is bound to be favourable, for the 
 simple reason that it must ultimately depend 
 upon the exertions of a people renowned 
 throughout the world for hard and con- 
 tinuous industry. 
 
 [176] 
 
THE UNIQUE CITY 
 
 On the other hand, practically all that was 
 spectacular in the city, all the leading, all 
 the centre round which civic activities had 
 grouped themselves for centuries, is de- 
 stroyed. Take the Grande Place. If Ypres 
 is to persist in a future at all comparable to 
 its immediate past (to say nothing of its 
 historic past) , the privately owned buildings 
 on the Grande Place will, without exception, 
 have to be begun all over again, and before 
 that task can be undertaken the founda- 
 tions will have to be cleared — a tremendous 
 undertaking in itself. I do not know how 
 many privately owned buildings there were 
 on the Grande Place, but I will guess a 
 hundred and fifty, probably none of which 
 was less than three storeys in height. All 
 these buildings belonged to individuals, indi- 
 viduals who intimately possessed them and 
 counted on them as a source of income or 
 well-being, individuals who are now scat- 
 tered, impoverished, and acutely discour- 
 aged. The same is to be said of the Rue de 
 Lille and of other important streets. 
 
 Suppose the Germans back again in the 
 
 [177] 
 
OVER THERE 
 
 land of justice, modesty, and unselfishness; 
 and suppose the property-owners of Ypres 
 collected once more in Ypres. The enter- 
 prise of reconstruction facing them will 
 make such a demand of initiative force and 
 mere faith as must daunt the most audacious 
 among them. And capital dragged out of a 
 bankrupt Germany will by no means solve 
 the material problem. For labour will be 
 nearly as scarce as money ; the call for labour 
 in every field cannot fail to surpass in its 
 urgency any call in history. The simple 
 contemplation of the gigantic job will be 
 staggering. To begin with, the withered 
 and corrupt dead will have to be excavated 
 from the cellars, and when that day comes 
 those will be present who can say: "This 
 skeleton was So-and-So's child," "That must 
 have been my mother. ..." Terrific hours 
 await Ypres. . . . And when (or if) the 
 buildings have been re-erected, tenants will 
 have to be found for them — and then think 
 of the wholesale refurnishing! . . . The 
 deep human instinct which attaches men and 
 women to a particular spot of the earth's 
 
 [178] 
 
THE UNIQUE CITY 
 
 surface is so powerful that almost certainly 
 the second incarnation of Ypres will be 
 initiated, but that it will be carried very far 
 towards completion seems to me to be some- 
 what doubtful. To my mind the new Ypres 
 cannot be more than a kind of camp amid 
 the dark ruins of the old, and the city must 
 remain for generations, if not for ever, a 
 ghastly sign and illustration of what cupid- 
 ity and stupidity and vanity can compass 
 together when physical violence is their 
 instrument. 
 
 The immediate future of Ypres, after the 
 war, is plain. It will instantly become one 
 of the show-places of the world. Hotels will 
 appear out of the ground, guides and touts 
 will pullulate at the railway station, the tour 
 of the ruins will be mapped out, and the 
 tourists and globe-trotters of the whole 
 planet will follow that tour in batches like 
 staring sheep. Much money will be amassed 
 by a few persons out of the exhibition of 
 misfortune and woe. A sinister fate for a 
 community! Nevertheless, the thing must 
 come to pass, and it is well that it should 
 
 [179] 
 
OYER THERE 
 
 <^ 
 
 <b 
 
 come to pass. The greater the number of 
 people who see Ypres for themselves, the 
 greater the hope of progress for mankind. 
 
 If the fa9ade of the Cloth Hall can be 
 saved, some such inscription as the following 
 ought to be incised along the length of it — 
 
 "ON JULY 31sT, 1914, THE GER- 
 MAlSr MINISTER AT BRUSSELS 
 GAVE A POSITIVE AND SOLEMN 
 ASSURANCE THAT GERMANY 
 HAD NO INTENTION OF VIO- 
 LATING THE NEUTRALITY OF 
 BELGIUM. FOUR DAYS LATER 
 THE GERMAN ARMY INVADED 
 BELGIUM. LOOK AROUND." 
 
 When you are walking through that which 
 was Ypres, nothing arouses a stronger feel- 
 ing — half contempt, half anger — than the 
 thought of the mean, miserable, silly, child- 
 ish, and grotesque excuses which the wit of 
 Germany has invented for her deliberately 
 planned crime. And nothing arouses a 
 more grim and sweet satisfaction than the 
 
 [ 180 ] 
 
 - 6 6. 
 
THE UNIQUE CITY 
 
 thought that she already has the gravest 
 reason to regret it, and would give her head 
 not to have committed it. Despite all vaunt- 
 ings, all facile chatterings about the alleged 
 co-operation of an unknowable and awful 
 God, all shriekings of unity and power, all 
 bellowings about the perfect assurance of 
 victory, all loud countings of the fruits of 
 victory — the savage leaders of the deluded 
 are shaking in their shoes before the antici- 
 pated sequel of an outrage ineffable alike 
 in its barbarism and in its idiocy. 
 
 [181] 
 

 
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