You would say that a party of lunatics had been let loose on the city
with coal-hammers: there is hardly a square yard of any surface which
is not pierced, or splintered, or dented. The whole fabric of the
place lies prostrate, under a shroud of broken bricks and broken
plaster. The Hun has said in his majesty: "If you will not yield me
this, the last city in the last corner of Belgium, I can at least see
to it that not one stone thereof remains upon another.--So yah!"

Such is the appearance presented by the venerable and historic city of
Ypres, after fifteen months of personal contact with the apostles of
the new civilisation. Only the methodical and painstaking Boche could
have reduced a town of such a size to such a state. Imagine Chester in
a similar condition, and you may realise the number of shells which
have fallen, and are still falling, into the stricken city.

But--the main point to observe is this. We are inside, and the
Boche is outside! Fenced by a mighty crescent of prosaic trenches,
themselves manned by paladins of an almost incredible stolidity, Ypres
still points her broken fingers to the sky--shattered, silent, but
inviolate still; and all owing to the obstinacy of a dull and unready
nation which merely keeps faith and stands by its friends. Such an
attitude of mind is incomprehensible to the Boche, and we are well
content that it should be so.




II

SHELL OUT!