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 offered
for sale such frivolous things as postcards displaying the damage
done to the railway-station quarter.

Then came the major bombardment, which is not yet over.

You may obtain a just idea of the effects of the major bombardment
by adventuring into the interior of the Cathedral of St. Martin. This
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 entirely
unroofed, and its south wall has vanished. 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 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