rd block of the B division, and so on. By wireless or in
other ways the message is sent to the batteries, and B 3, along which
an ammunition train is moving, suddenly finds itself under fire. Thus
ended the second lesson!

An ammunition train, having safely escaped B 3 and all the other
terrors that are spread for such as it, rumbled by, going through the
Square. The very vibration of its wheels as they rattled along the
street set parts of the old building to shaking. Stones fell. It was
not safe to stand near the belfry.

Up to this time I had found a certain philosophy among the French and
Belgian officers as to the destruction of their towns. Not of Louvain,
of course, or those earlier towns destroyed during the German
invasion, but of the bombardment which is taking place now along the
battle line. But here I encountered furious resentment.

There is nothing whatever left of the city for several blocks in each
direction round the Cloth Hall. At the time it was destroyed the army
of the Allies was five miles in advance of the town. The shells went
over their heads for days, weeks.

So accurate is modern gunnery that given a chart of a city the gunner
can drop a shell within a few yards of any desired spot. The Germans
had a chart of Ypres. They might have saved the Cloth Hall, as they
did save the Cathedral at Antwerp. But they were furious with thwarted
ambition--the onward drive had been checked. Instead of attempting to
save the Cloth Hall they focussed all their fire on it. There was
nothing to gain by this wanton destruction.

It is a little difficult in America, where great structures are a
matter of steel and stone erected in a year or so, to understand what
its wonderful old buildings meant to Flanders. In a way they typified
its history, certainly its art. The American likes to have his art in
his home; he buys great paintings and puts them on the walls. He
covers his floors with the entire art of a nomadic people. But on the
Continent the method is different. They have built their art into
their buildings; their great paintings are in churches or in
structures like the Cloth Hall. Their homes are comparatively
unadorned, purely places for living. All that they prize they have
stored, open to the world, in their historic buildings. It is for that
reason that the destruction of the Cloth Hall of Ypres is a matter of
personal resentment to each individual of the nation to which it
belonged. So I watched