Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1915-07-06
BY FREDERICK PALMER


British Headquarters, France, July
6.-"How are the turrets? Still hold
ing out?" they ask up and down the
lines of any one who has come from
Ypres. Everybody has a tender per-
sonal interest in the turrets of the old
Cloth Hall which deepens with each
day that they survive in defiance of
the German gunners above the wreck
age wrought by German shells.
People are still living in Rheims and
Louvain, but Ypres is absolutely q dead
city; dead as Pompei; dead as q
deserted mining camp in Alaska. No
face appears in any door or window
that can still be called a door or win
dow; no figures are seen moving
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 noble edifice 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-
bered its turrets. Different conquerors
of Ypres put her women and children
to the sword but no one had even
harmed the old Cloth Hall beyond TAX
| ing 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 visitor
have his shoes cobbled. Only one
house in the big square had been hit,
It's roofs dropped over the edges of a
corner section which had been torn
out of the main floor.
Germans Fire on Cathedral
The Germans threw in occasional
shells mostly directed at the cathedral
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 begun. The people paid for this
in their civic pride and let other civic
improvements wait. For the Cloth
Hall gave Ypres a civic distinction. II
was the historical soul of Ypres. The
old frescoes on its walls told the city's
early history. 1t meant to Ypres quite
as much in its way as Westminster
Abbey to London of Fanueil Hall tc
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 was exhausted. Destruction OF
things sacred to them had become
routing. When they heard another
explosion and word was passed that
they went around to the Grande Place
to see If the turrets and the gilt clock
face were still unharmed. And they
said: The Cloth Hall still can be re-
| stored" 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
was not a single house left on tho
| Grande Place that resembled a house
any more than a rubber bag with the
gas out of 1t resembles q balloon. In
| the second battle of Ypres when the
Germans had another try for the
Channel ports the sensation of their
| attack with asphyxiating gas over
! shadowed what they did with theiI
guns. Heretofore their practice on
| Ypres had been comparatively teasing
playfulness. This time they went al
the job of destruction systematically;
| jumping from one space on the check
erboard to another they smashed
Ypres section by section.
AS they meant to take the town
this seemed poor policy for they would
! find no roofs for shelter when they
moved in. But their object was con-
fusion for British reinforcements hur-
rying up along roads crowded with
refugees; wholesale death for men in
billets in town and destruction and