th a Latin idealism she has taken her place by the
side of those who fight for a liberal civilisation against a Byzantine
imperialism.

As I came out of the brightly lit Galleria Vittorio Emanuele into the
darkened Piazza del Duomo I stopped under the arcade and stood looking
up at the shadowy darkness of that great pinnacled barn, that marble
bride-cake, which is, I suppose, the last southward fortress of the
Franco-English Gothic.

"It was here," said my host, "that we burnt the German stuff."

"What German stuff?"

"Pianos and all sorts of things. From the shops. It is possible,
you know, to buy things too cheaply--and to give too much for the
cheapness."

THE WESTERN WAR (SEPTEMBER, 1916)

I. RUINS

1

If I had to present some particular scene as typical of the peculiar
vileness and mischief wrought by this modern warfare that Germany has
elaborated and thrust upon the world, I do not think I should choose as
my instance any of those great architectural wrecks that seem most to
impress contemporary writers. I have seen the injuries and ruins of the
cathedrals at Arras and Soissons and the wreckage of the great church
at Saint Eloi, I have visited the Hotel de Ville at Arras and seen
photographs of the present state of the Cloth Hall at Ypres--a building
I knew very well indeed in its days of pride--and I have not been very
deeply moved. I suppose that one is a little accustomed to Gothic ruins,
and that there is always something monumental about old buildings; it is
only a question of degree whether they are more or less tumble-down. I
was far more desolated by the obliteration of such villages as Fricourt
and Dompierre, and by the horrible state of the fields and gardens
round about them, and my visit to Arras railway station gave me all the
sensations of coming suddenly on a newly murdered body.

Before I visited the recaptured villages in the zone of the actual
fighting, I had an idea that their evacuation was only temporary,
that as soon as the war line moved towards Germany the people of the
devastated villages would return to build their houses and till their
fields again. But I see now that not only are homes and villages
destroyed almost beyond recognition, but the very fields are destroyed.
They are wildernesses of shell craters; the old worked soil is buried
and great slabs of crude earth have been flung up over it. No ordinary
plough will travel over this frozen sea, let along th