The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-07-09
YPRES, NOW LIKE POMPEII, IS BUT
 DESERTED RUINS
Soldiers Guard Untenanted Waste as They Fight a
 Nest of Rattlesnakes.

HOW are the LurreLS SL1ll nOIo- ing out?'' they ask up and down the line of any one who has come from Ypres. Everybody has a tender per sona1 interest in the turrets of the old Cloth Hall which deepens with each day that they survive in de- fiance of the German gunners above the wreckage wrought by German shells.
 People are still living in Rheims and Louvain. but Ypres is absolute ly 8 dead city; dead as Pompei; dead as a deserted mining camp in Alaska Noe face appears in any door or win dow that can still be called a door or window; no figures are seen nov ing through the shell holes in walls that are still standing.
 Before the war Ypres had some eighteen thousand inhabitants Now it has not a single one. No one is making any effort to make any ruin habitable. The only signs of life ex- cept occasional soldiers coming out and going to the lines are cats grown wild which become streaks of fur dis appearing among the ruins of their former homes.
 The cathedral which stands back of the Cloth Hall was a noble edifAce no doubt, but there are a great many cathedrals in Europe The Cloth Hall is unique; the best of it's kind. Any one who ever saw it always remem-
 
 Querors of Ypres put her, women and children to the sword but no one had even harmed the old Cloth Hall beyond taking away a few statues.
 Last February perhaps four or five thousand people remained in Ypres. They were going and coming about the streets as usual keeping their shops open and doing what business they could at the old stand. A vIsi- tor could get a meal in a restaurant or have his shoes scobbled. Only one house in the big square had been hit. Its roofs dropped over the edges of a corner section which had been torn out of the main floor.
 The Germans threw in occasional shells mostly directed at the cathe- dral with some of the misses bound to hit the Cloth Hall Restoration work which age required had just been finished on the Cloth Hall before the war began. The people paid for this in their civic pride and let other civic improvements wait. For the Cloth Hall gave Ypres 8, civic distinction. It was the historical soul of Ypres. The old frescpes on its walls told the city's early history. It meant to Ypfes quite as much in it's way as Westrninster Abbey to London or Painful Hal1 to Boston Every man or woman born in Ypres had been brought up to tell the time of day by the raised gilt figures of the old golden clock face.
 By February the peoples sense of horror twas exhausted. Destruction of things sacred to them had become routine. When they heard another explosion and word was passed that the Germans had scored another hit they went around to the Grande Place to see if the turrets and the gilt clock face we're still unharned. And they said: ssThe Cloth Hall, still can be restored-these stubborn Flemish who would not let shell fire drive them away from their old town.
 The next time the Associated Press correspondent went to Ypres there lwas not a single house left on the Grande Place that resembIed a house any more than a rubber bag with the gas out of it resembles a balloon In the second battle of Y pres when the Germans had another try for the Channel ports the sensation of their 1 attack with aspyhxiating gas over lshadowed what they did with their l guns Heretofore their practice on 1 Ypres had been comparatively teasing i pIayfulness This time they went at 1 jumping from one space on the checkerboard to another they smash ed pres section by section.
 As they meant to take the town this seemed poor policy for they l would find no roofs for shelter when they moved in. But their object was confusion for British endorsements hurrying up along roads crowded with refugees; wholesale death for men in I bil1ets in town and destruction and coming through the streets. This was excellent theory which did not work out in practice. The British I were not biIleting troops to any ex- tent in Ypres and you could count I the number of army wagons hit on the Il iya1 0fr rrn ha nd 0T3a SfeJ1 n faeA l British trenches accomplished more l than ten into Ypres. The main re- sI suit was that the homes and offices and cafes of eighteen thousand peo- sI pie were destroyed.
 The Az ?centimeter (17 inch mor- tar1 had it's part in the work. When a, seventeen-inch shell struck a house
 the remains of the building not dis
 tributed on the pavement were in an enlarged cellar. Debris in the
 streets still remains where it fell.
 There is no purpose in cleaning it up
 in an uninhabited town. Paving l stones are scattered about from the
 explosion of seventeen-inchr shell
 which struck in the center of the Grande Place and made crater
 about fifteen feet across and ten feet
 deep. This two thousand pounds of
 steel and powder did not Bill any
 body so far as could be learned. It . would not take a paving gang long
 could have brought down a cathe-
 dral tower dug a still larger crater in the soft earth of the cathedral
 grounds Big shells or little shells they do not count unless they hit. On the principle that lightning never strikes twice in the same place prob ably the safest cover you could find in case of another bombardment o1
 Ypres would be to sit in the bottom ? of one of those crafers Another
 bo1nbardment would seem as bootless
 as failing last years straw or kicking
 a dead dog. However the Germans
 keep on throwing shells into the
 wreckage at intervals as if they coulc l-never be satisfied that they haG
 properly finished the job of chaos
 Every standing wall was cFipped witt