_Fuit Hupra_! The ancient city has at last crumbled into dust; but if
she is blotted out amongst the cities of Belgium, she will live for ever
in the hearts and the history of Canada and the British Empire. She
belongs--her halls and churches, her streets and houses, all her people
and her past--henceforth to us and those who come after us. She is,
spiritually, as much a part of the British Empire as Vancouver or
Toronto. Her quaint memorials will be cherished by us; her story will
be told by our children's children. She is a city of the dead--our
British dead.
It is strange that it should be reserved for Ypres to play such a
prominent part on the stage of this war. For the city was itself but a
symbol of a past greatness and a melancholy survivor of centuries-old
tragedy. No town of its size in Europe--no town of ten times its
size--has suffered more.
During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Ypres was the metropolis of
Flanders, taking the lead of Bruges and Ghent. In 1267, in a petition
to Pope Innocent IV., the aldermen estimated the population at 200,000
souls. It possessed 4,000 looms, and counted seven parish churches.
Then was built the vast and splendid Drapers' Guild Hall, the most
remarkable secular monument of the Middle Ages. Merchants from all over
Europe had counting-houses within its territory. The Kings of France
and England and the Emperors of Germany granted special privileges to
the men of Ypres who came to trade in their realms.
Then came ruinous and bloody wars against the Counts of Flanders and
against the Kings of France; came civil dissensions, riots, and
massacres. After being besieged by English troops under Richard II. in
1383, the town found its suburbs destroyed, and its industrial
population terribly depleted by exile. In the following century it was
visited by repeated misfortunes, and in the sixteenth it became the
scene of religious persecution, massacres, and pillage. In 1566 Ypres
was sacked by a mob, and the same fate befell it in 1578. It was used
as a fortress against the Spaniards, and when it fell, after a siege of
eight months, the population had dwindled to 5,000 souls, and within its
walls all was in ruins. Sieges and bombardments continued at intervals
until, at the French Revolution, Ypres fell into the hands of the troops
of the Convention, and once more--"for the last time," says the local
historian--became a victim of violence and destruction. Alas, not the
last!
Briefly, that is the tale of Ypres, relentlessly pursued by misfortune.
And yet, despite all the city has endured, it fronted the world bravely
and even with an imposing aspect, repairing the ravages of war with
patience and fortitude.
This time is it possible that this noble city should rise again? Its
pride--the glorious Guild Hall--the mediaeval churches and mansions are
all but level with the ground. There is scarce a single house in the
city whose walls are undamaged, and most of them are mere heaps of
bricks and mortar.
I have just made a tour of the streets, accompanied by a young Canadian
engineer. It is a desert whose silence is only broken by the thunder of
guns, for the Germans are bombarding again. Occasionally a 4.5 shell
crashes perilously near, or a shrapnel explodes over our heads, and
instinctively we dart into cover. But for these reminders of a savage
and felon present we might be walking in a city buried like Pompeii or
Herculaneum, and now exhumed to display to curious eyes the crumbling
memorials of a remote and peaceful past.
My companion reminds me, as we pass the convent of the Irish Nuns of
Ypres, that the Princess Patricia's carried their colours through Ypres,
and that while they halted here one of their officers quoted some lines
of the famous ballad:
In the cloisters of Ypres a banner is swaying,
And by it a pale, weeping maiden is praying.
There have been, in dreams, many pale, weeping maidens praying beside
that banner wrought by the royal Princess Patricia. God grant soon that
the prayers of all women be heard!
*APPENDIX.*