A British officer writes home from the front remarking on the
curious avoidance by the Germans, at first, of shelling the town
hall at Ypres.
"Some suspicions were aroused by it," he writes, "and the place
was searched. In the vaults underneath it, which are of very
great extent, was found an enormous quantity of German stores and
ammunition sufficient to last them a month and serve as a depot for
their attack on Calais.
"It had been put there with the connivance of the Mayor at the
time the Germans were in occupation. This explains their desperate
efforts to capture the town again. The traitor Mayor was shot.
Immediately afterward the Germans shelled the place and smashed up
the building and set it on fire."