A  few  squat  towers,  many  rustic  clock-towers,
exquisite  belfries,  carved  like  lace,  reminded  one
of  those  old  religious,  municipal,  communal  and
artistic  traditions  which  lay  so  near  to  the  hearts
of  this  thoughtful  and  energetic  people.
To-day — ah  !  to-day — you  must  conceive  a  melan-
choly plain  where,  through  a  sky  that  is  heavy  with


52  THE  WAY   OF  HONOUR

fog,  pass  continually  the  screaming  shrapnel  and
the  bursting  shell.  The  soil  is  mud,  torn  up  by
wagons,  ploughed  by  projectiles,  drenched  in  blood.
Here  and  there  floods  have  spread  into  great  sheets
of  water  wherein  float  rubbish  and  sometimes  corpses.
And  upon  this  soil,  since  the  i6th  of  October,  men
are  fighting,  destroying,  killing  one  another.
How  many  farms  lie  in  ashes  !  How  many  trees
are  prone  !  How  many  mills,  towers  and  belfries
are  dead  or  wounded !  Ypres,  Loo,  Nieuport,
Dixmude — these  are  full  of  ruins.  Villages  that
have  been  captured,  retaken  and  lost  again,  such
as  Pervyse  and  Ramscapelle,  have  no  longer  one
house  standing.  I  have  seen  in  one  of  their  grave-
yards, where  our  soldiers  have  lately  dug  rustic
graves  for  their  comrades,  in  the  earth  which  they
have  naively  decorated  with  sand  and  shells,  like
those  little  altars  which,  in  May,  the  children  build
by  the  side  of  our  roads — I  have  seen  this  :  the
sacrilegious  shells  smashing  the  crosses,  tearing  open
graves  that  have  been  hardly  closed  and  profaning
the  dead.
