The Pleasantville press. (Pleasantville, N.J.) 1912-1929, 1915-05-29
GHOSTS IN
Five Centuries Ago English Warriors
Fought Over the Territory That
is Now the Scene of Euro
pean Warfare.

l think that old ghosts must be
astir in Flanders, now that ar Eng
fish army is encamped there again,
with Edward, prince of Wales, on the
Headquarters staff. Out of the mists
of time there must surely come some
of those English gentlemen and mem
alarms who more than five centuries
ago came with another prince of
Wales, called Edward, to fight against
heavy odds, in and about all those
towns in Belgium and France which,
again, have become familiar in u
mouths as household words-St.
Omer. Ypres, Arras. Scissors, Reims,
st. Quentin, Gravelines, Dunkirk, Ca
lais and Abbeville, Lille and Armen-
tiers.
Perhaps Eyewitness" knows the
names of those silent ghosts, though
he has not yet written about them in
his dispatches, owing to the severity
of the censor. He knows, | am sure,
that among those who watched the
destruction of Cloth Hall were Sir
John Chandos-"The Hover of knight
hood"-and Lord Thomas Percy, Sir
Godfrey de Harcourt and Lord Regin-
aid Gotham, Lord Thomas Holland
and Lord Delaware, Lord Robert Ne
vile, Lord Thomas Clifford, Lord
B%ourchier, Lord Latimer, Sir Walter
Manny-"sans peur ct sans reproche"
and many other knights and squires,
"whom," as old Froissart said, 81 cam
not now name"
The ancestors of British officers
who are now fighting in Flanders rode
under their banners over the flat
m%arshlands, they banqueted in many
of the grand halls which now lie in
ruins under the German eagle, they
stormed at the gates of many towns
which are now filled with British
soldiers, their lances glittered down
many of the roads where the winter
sun now glints upon the lances of
French dragons; and with the chiv-
airy of medieval knighthood they did
many acts of courtesy and valor and
heroic adventure upon the same
ground where the men under Sir John
French have upheld the old tradi-
lions of their breed with no less cou-
rage. Also, according to the way OF
war they ,ravaged the countryside
through which they passed, burned
farmsteads and peasants cots, swept
it clean of all food, looted its treas
ures, and laid it waste, so that there
was ~desolation and famine where the
English army had passed.
1t was Lord Henry Spencer, bishop
of Norwich, who undertook the siege
of Ypres in the days when English
arrows sung with a shriller note than
the modern she'll.
"Day after day." writes Froissart,
"the assault continued, but the place
still held out. At last the English
finding that they could not take the
town by storm, and that they had ex-
pended all their artillery, resolved to
have a quantity of faggots collected
with which to fill up the bitches, so
that they might advance and fight
hand-to-hand with the garrison I'M
dermine the walls, and, by throwing
them down, effect an entrance"
Every road and dyke round Ypres
was moistened with English blood in
those old days, and now, fighting side
by side instead of aginst the French
and the Flemings, English blood drips
down to the same soil, which is mixed
with the dust of heroic bones of Eng
lish arrowheads, of steel breastplates
and richly chased casque, and of all
the panoply of medieval ~knighthood,
now dissolved into the chemistry OF
the earth's graveyards.
If ghostly warriors keep the watch
es of the night, Sir Charles Chandos,
Sir Walter Nanny, Lord James Aud
ley, Lord Reginald Gotham, and a
thousand other knights of old renown
salute the men who challenge death
for England. The Black Prince rails
es his visor and kisses the sword hilt
to Edward, prince of Wales, who is
walking the same fields of fame and
blood.-London Chronicle.