The future of Ypres exercises the mind. Ypres is only one among
many martyrs. But, as matters stand at 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, historical, 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
irritation 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 gave way, not the trenches. The yearners after Calais did
themselves no good by exterminating 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 conception of the damage done to it. Ypres is not
destroyed. I should estimate that when I saw it in July at least half