to light the lamps of
the car. Shells were fewer. With the approach of night the activity
behind the lines increased; more ammunition trains made their way over
the debris; regiments prepared for the trenches marched through the
square on their way to the front.

They were laden, as usual, with extra food and jars of water. Almost
every man had an additional loaf of bread strapped to the knapsack at
his back. They were laughing and talking among themselves, for they
had had a sleep and hot food; for the time at least they were dry and
fed and warm.

On the way out of the town we passed a small restaurant, one of a row
of houses. It was the only undestroyed building I saw in Ypres.

"It is the only house," said the General, "where the inhabitants
remained during the entire bombardment. They made coffee for the
soldiers and served meals to officers. Shells hit the pavement and
broke the windows; but the house itself is intact. It is
extraordinary."

We stopped at the one-time lunatic asylum on our way back. It had been
converted into a hospital for injured civilians, and its long wards
were full of women and children. An English doctor was in charge.

Some of the buildings had been destroyed, but in the main it had
escaped serious injury. By a curious fatality that seems to have
followed the chapels and churches of Flanders, the chapel was the only
part that was entirely gone. One great shell struck it while it was
housing soldiers, as usual, and all of them were killed. As an example
of the work of one shell the destruction of that building was
enormous. There was little or nothing left.

"The shell was four feet high," said the Doctor, and presented me with
the nose of it.

"You may get more at any moment," I said.

He shrugged his shoulders. "What must be, must be," he said quietly.

When the bombardment was at its height, he said, they took their
patients to the cellar and continued operating there. They had only a
candle or two. But it was impossible to stop, for the wards were full
of injured women and children.

I walked through some of the wards. It was the first time I had seen
together so many of the innocent victims of this war--children blind
and forever cut off from the light of day, little girls with arms
gone, women who will never walk again.

It was twilight. Here and there a candle gleamed, for any bright
illumination was considered unwise.

What must they think as they lie there during th