Belfry was the labour of a hundred years-the gift, not of a Prince, but of a people proud of their civic life and hard-won liberties. For four centuries it had dominated the Artois plain-its lofty Tower with its Crown, its heraldic Lion and its Golden Sun, a landmark to all the countryside, a superb example of the secular Gothic of its time. . . . Beside it the Hôtel de Ville rose, a rich and beautiful structure, in which the corporate life of the city had for generations found its expression.

It was on the 7th of October 1914-these dates are important-that the Germans, driven from Arras, resolved upon the destruction of these monuments. Incendiary shells fell thick upon the Hôtel de Ville; its roof took fire; its splendid interior, rich with old oaken wainscot and priceless tapestries, was seized by the eager flames; its mirrors and chandeliers cracked and were shivered by the heat; and the fires, leaping up to the Belfry spire, lit the wide landscape, across which the people of Arras were to be seen flying for refuge to the neighbouring villages.

The Belfry survived in a damaged state till the 21st of October, when the crime of its destruction was consummated. Sixty-nine shells were fired at it, and in fifty minutes the old tower, its carillon bells sounding for the last time, fell with its Lion and its Crown and its Golden Sun into the ruins of the

Place and upon the Hôtel de Ville.

The Emperor William is said to have looked from a neighbouring eminence upon its fall.

From this scene of cruel desolation we went to the Palace of St Vaast. This immense building, once Benedictine abbey and episcopal residence, contained at the time of the bombardment the museum of the city, its library and pictures, its irreplaceable archives and 1200 manuscripts. It was gutted in two days. The shells were directed not only on the building, but, as those who laboured to save its most precious contents affirm, in the form of a barrage, designed to make the efforts impossible. Notwithstanding this, many of the most valuable objects were moved into the cellars and saved from destruction, but many were lost for ever. Of the 50,000 printed volumes in the library only one survives, and that, in the bitter words of one of the townsmen, was a rare little volume obligingly lent to Carlsruhe a short time before the War.

The Cathedral adjoining it, a vast structure with accommodation within it for 8000 people, was a ruin, more impressive now perhaps than in its prime. Its walls, with gaping rents in them made by the passing shells, were still standing; but the whole of the vaulted roof, with the exception of a single filament of arch, lay in fragments upon the floor. So vast

were the fragments that it was like climbing up a hill to advance across them to the depression in which the High Altar once stood.

The great gates of the Cathedral lay shattered, and their hinges and débris lay in fragments on the lofty stairs that ascend to the floor of the building.

This was the work not of one but of many bombardments. On the 5th and 6th of July the Cathedral was near its end. Its treasures had already been carried into the safest corner of the building, but there was no longer any safety there. The devoted servants of the Church laboured to save what still remained.

The Vicar has written an account of those tragic hours. "It was near eight o'clock," he says, "in the evening of the 5th of July. But five of us remained. We carried behind the pillars of the Choir all the candelabras and chandeliers of the Altars, and then with much effort the beautiful but heavy statue in marble of the Sacred Heart. We would have tried also to save the statues of Joan of Arc, of St Francis of Assisi, of the Blessed Virgin; but the situation became impossible. The flames had reached the Vestry of the Canons, the smoke was asphyxiating, and the shells were bursting from moment to moment within the walls. It was half-past nine, and we could not stay.

"We carried upon our shoulders, as in a funeral procession, the great Christ of the Calvary,

and it saved our lives; for as we emerged two shells burst over our heads, and fragments of stones hit us as we passed before the gate-keeper's lodge.

"A terrible scene was displayed before our eyes. The Palace of Saint Vaast was in flames. The roof of the Parish Church was burning; clouds of smoke, sheets of flame, and showers of sparks enveloped the scene. The beams collapsed, the walls fell in. For the space of an hour the Germans poured upon the city incendiary shells, with the object of preventing us from limiting the spread of the fire."

On the 10th of July the dome and the roof of the Cathedral finally fell in, and the ruin was complete.

These were the principal buildings destroyed in Arras. It would be a long story to tell in detail of the rest of the hospitals, the asylums of the old and afflicted, the convents and churches that bore the brunt of the enemy's chivalry.

But there is one little scene that is burnt into one's mind by its pitiless tragedy. We know what almshouses are in England. This was one for the aged, beside an asylum for the deaf and dumb. The most active of these old people had already been moved to the Chartreuse of Neuvilled, when upon the 30th of October 1914, in the early hours of the morning, the German guns were trained upon those who remained. This company of old and feeble people was assembled for the last time, preparatory to their departure, when a shell

struck the building. were carried floor and all into the basement, in a horrible chaos of the dying and the dead. Thirty were killed and seventeen wounded. The spectacle, says one who saw it, was indescribable; and the Archbishop, who came over at the imminent risk of his life to solace the Sisters and these forlorn and broken old people, was so moved by it that he burst into tears.

The Archbishop of Rheims, writing from his own desolate city, addressed to the German people these solemn words, that will be endorsed by all impartial men

"The assaults upon cathedrals, upon persons consecrated to the service of God, upon women and children, upon the aged and the wounded; the bombardment of open and unfortified towns, the incendiary

"But all these things are true, and every one of these crimes your soldiers have committed, not only with the consent of their officers but at their express command, in conformity with their theory of war. The barbarity of your armies is inscribed in letters of fire wherever they have passed; the vengeance of history will perpetuate the memory of these events, and humanity will never consent to forget them."

And if any after this be in doubt, let him go to Arras; let him look upon the spectacle of woe; let him gather the truth from the lips of those of its people who still survive.

When these words appear in print, the Tank will have become as well known in its way as the Dreadnought or the 75. But at the time of my visit the Tank had just made its sensational début into the field of battle. People were laughing and crying over it by turns. The tears were from the Boche. The world was agog to know what it looked like, and curiosity about it was on edge in the allied armies. Raemaekers, the great cartoonist, whose pictures are

faithful accuracy, depicted it as a snorting mon

ster before whose progress the Boche was flying in terror. He was right about the Boche, but it was evident he had not seen the Tank. It was my luck to find the Tank at home, in the heart of a pleasant countryside, manoeuvring and dressing for battle, and I do not think that I have ever in my life seen a more diverting sight.

It was a sleepy landscape upon which I gazed, with a faint autumn haze brooding over its woods and fields: here and there a hay-rick; hedges and secluded farms, where

I began to wonder if they were real things, or merely an illusion of the autumn mists. But they soon started out to explain themselves. Collecting together, they drew up across the landscape in line of battle, and, at a given signal, advanced towards me with a slow, ponderous, and inexorable movement that was like the march of Fate itself. Inspired, as it seemed, with some obscure but terrible purpose of offence, they came on, descending the steep ridges, marching with an animal-like action over the yawning trenches, leisurely, slow, and careful as Behemoth himself; climbing the low hills, going straight over high walls of sand bags, plastering out barbed wire as if it were paper; unmoved by any external influence; slow, slogging, and determined; now in line, now in couples, with their great noses side by side; now coming on one by one; glowing in the sudden sunlight, swathed and enveloped in mists of lucent smoke, moaning internally, as they moved upon their course.

Add to all this the roar of battle, the bursting of shells, the splutter of machine-guns, the flash of explosions, the shouts and cries of men in the throes of conflict, "Kamerad, Kamerad!" the squelch of the deadly bayonet, and you will have some faint idea of the amazing pitch to which Man has carried his passion for War in this year of grace, 1916 years since the advent of peace and good-will upon earth.

Even upon this quiet countryside, far from the noise and din of battle, with the farmers' children peeping through the hedges in spite of the mounted guards, there was something so impressive and terrible about these slow, strange, animallike forms, so lifelike in their moving guns as they rose and fell and circled about like the projecting eyes of crabs; so melancholy in their moaning, as if they suffered from the pangs of a great thirst for human blood, that one stood spellbound and caught, as it were, in the toils of some bygone evolution. The world seemed to be going back into the dark ages and civilisation to have failed by its own mastery over matter.

gun, which the Boche used without pity or mercy against our human flesh and blood in all those early and long-drawn months when the supremacy material lay with him. And it is characteristic of him to cry out now that the

But

tables have been turned. the Tank has come to stay, and while he has his limitations and is far from being invulnerable, he will evolve in time into something much more formidable and effective than he is even at present.

-French Daily Paper.

The Battle of the Somme has been in being now for nearly three months, and foot by foot, yard by yard, mile after mile, the Boche has been steadily driven back, evicted from his trenches, forced out of strongholds he believed to be invincible, killed in his tracks. Again and again have his counter-attacks been brushed aside. The end is not yet, but it is the beginning of the end. Of the dead that have been piled up on both sides, of the wounded who have passed through the clearing stations, of the millions of slowly earned wealth that have been poured out in shells and guns and implements of war upon this small fragment of France, who shall adequately tell the tale? These fields have been watered with blood and paved with gold. And of the human record, the secret history of the soul, the anguish of broken hearts, who can attempt to speak?

But to-night at the Chateau which is for the moment one's home in France, all is peace.

The sky is clear and bright with the undying stars; the air so still that the faint trickle of water through the park, the cheeping of a cricket, are the only sounds. The music of War might never have been heard in the world. Yet there is War there sure enough, beyond that dark outline where the rolling countryside goes up to meet the stars. The great guns there are thundering and pounding away, and they will go on pounding and thundering away all through the night; and men are waiting there, some wakeful and some asleep, each after his own mood, for the big thing that is due on the morrow. Over there in England, under the green South Downs across the Channel waters, the night is broken to listening ears by the boop, boop, boop of these distant guns; and many an anxious woman turns restlessly on her pillow with the anguish of those who are afar off and can do nothing, though all be at stake. Many by to-morrow will have lost their all. But here, by some