a cosmic menace. It is as though you are living on the slopes of some vast
volcano whose eruptions may at any moment submerge all this phantasmal life
in a sea of molten lava. And, hark! through the sounds of the roads and the
streets, the chaffering of the market-place, the rush of motor-cars, the
rhythmic tramp of men, there comes a dull, hollow roar, as from the mouth
of a volcano itself.

As you advance the scene changes. The movement becomes more feverish, more
intense. The very breath of the volcano seems to fan your cheek, and the
hollow roar has become near and plangent. It is no longer like the breaking
of great seas on a distant shore: it is like thunder rending the sky above
you. A little further, and another subtle change is observable. On either
hand the land has become solitary and unkempt. All the life of the fields
has vanished and the soldiers are in undisputed possession. Then even the
soldiers seem left behind, and you enter the strange solitude where the war
is waged. Before you rises the great mound of Ypres. In the distance it
looks like a living city with quaintly broken skyline, but as you approach
you see that it is only the tomb of a city standing there desolate and
shattered in the midst of a universal desolation.

It is midday as you pass through its streets, but there is no moving thing
visible amidst the ruins. The very spirit of loneliness is about you--not
the invigorating loneliness of the mountain tops, but the sad loneliness of
the grave. I have stood upon the ruins of Carthage, but even there I did
not feel the same sense of solitude that I felt as I walked the streets of
Ypres. There, at least, the birds were singing above you, and the Arab sat
beside his camel on the grass in the sunshine. Here nature itself seems
blasted by some dreadful flame of death. The streets preserve their
contours, but on either side the houses stand like gaunt skeletons,
roofless and shattered, fronts knocked out, floors smashed through or