faith as must daunt the most audacious among them. And capital
dragged out of a bankrupt Germany will by no means solve the
material problem. For labour will be nearly as scarce as money; the
call for labour in every field cannot fail to surpass in its urgency any
call in history. The simple contemplation of the gigantic job will be
staggering. To begin with, the withered and corrupt dead will have to
be excavated from the cellars, and when that day comes those will
be present who can say: "This skeleton was So-and-So's child,"
"That must have been my mother." Terrific hours await Ypres. And
when (or if) the buildings have been re-erected, tenants will have to
be found for them--and then think of the wholesale refurnishing!
The deep human instinct which attaches men and women to a
particular spot of the earth's surface is so powerful that almost
certainly the second incarnation of Ypres will be initiated, but that it
will be carried very far towards completion seems to me to be
somewhat doubtful. To my mind the new Ypres cannot be more
than a kind of camp amid the dark ruins of the old, and the city must
remain for generations, if not for ever, a ghastly sign and illustration
of what cupidity and stupidity and vanity can compass together
when physical violence is their instrument.

The immediate future of Ypres, after the war, is plain. It will instantly
become one of the show-places of the world. Hotels will appear out
of the ground, guides and touts will pullulate at the railway station,
the tour of the ruins will be mapped out, and the tourists and globe-
trotters of the whole planet will follow that tour in batches like staring
sheep. Much money will be amassed by a few persons out of the
exhibition of misfortune and woe. A sinister fate for a community!
Nevertheless, the thing must come to pass, and it is well that it
should come to pass. The greater the number of people who see