em, the
world may be a better place and humanity may never again be called
upon to endure all the agony and heartbreak of this generation.

X

ARRAS

It was raining, and a chilly wind blew as we passed beneath a
battered arch into the tragic desolation of Arras.

I have seen villages pounded by gun-fire into hideous mounds of dust
and rubble, their very semblance blasted utterly away; but Arras,
shell-torn, scarred, disfigured for all time, is a city still--a City
of Desolation. Her streets lie empty and silent, her once pleasant
squares are a dreary desolation, her noble buildings, monuments of
her ancient splendour, are ruined beyond repair. Arras is a dead
city, whose mournful silence is broken only by the intermittent
thunder of the guns.

Thus, as I paced these deserted streets where none moved save myself
(for my companions had hastened on), as I gazed on ruined buildings
that echoed mournfully to my tread, what wonder that my thoughts were
gloomy as the day itself? I paused in a street of fair, tall houses,
from whose broken windows curtains of lace, of plush, and tapestry
flapped mournfully in the chill November wind like rags upon a
corpse, while from some dim interior came the hollow rattle of a
door, and, in every gust, a swinging shutter groaned despairingly on
rusty hinge.

And as I stood in this narrow street, littered with the brick and
masonry of desolate homes, and listened to these mournful sounds, I
wondered vaguely what had become of all those for whom this door had
been wont to open, where now were the eyes that had looked down from
these windows many and many a time--would they ever behold again this
quiet, narrow street, would these scarred walls echo again to those
same voices and ring with joy of life and familiar laughter?

And now this desolate city became as it were peopled with the souls
of these exiles; they flitted ghostlike in the dimness behind
flapping curtains, they peered down through closed jalousies--wraiths
of the men and women and children who had lived and loved and played
here before the curse of the barbarian had driven them away.

And, as if to help this illusion, I saw many things that were
eloquent of these vanished people--glimpses through shattered windows
and beyond demolished house-fronts; here a table set for dinner, with
plates and tarnished cutlery on a dingy cloth that stirred damp and
lazily in the wind, yonder a grand piano, open and with sodden