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 the faces of the two officers with me.  There could be no question as to their attitude.  It was a personal loss they had suffered.  The loss of their homes they had accepted stoically.  But this was much more.  It was the loss of their art, their history, their tradition.  And it could not be replaced.

The firing was steady, unemotional.

As the wind died down we ventured into the ruins of the Cloth Hall itself.  The roof is gone, of course.  The building took fire from the bombardment, and what the shells did not destroy the fire did.  Melted lead from ancient gutters hung in stalactites.  In one place a wall was still standing, with a bit of its mural decoration.  I picked up a bit of fallen gargoyle from under the fallen tower and brought it away.  It is before me now.

It is seven hundred and fifteen years since that gargoyle was lifted into its place.  The Crusades were going on about that time; the robber barons were sallying out onto the plains on their raiding excursions.  The Norman Conquest had taken place.  From this very town of Ypres had gone across the Channel “workmen and artisans to build churches and feudal castles, weavers and workers of many crafts.”