Norwich bulletin., 1915-07-06
Ypres a Dead City.

pres a Dead Oi6ys
 How are the turrets? Still hold ing out?" they ask up and down the lines of any one who has come from 4pres. Everybody has tender per sonal interest in the turrets of the old Cloth Hall which deepens with each day that they survive in def- ance of the German gunners above the wreckage wrought by German shells.
 People are still living in Rheims and Louvain, but Ypres is absolutely a dead city: dead as a deserted mining camp in Alaska. No face appears in any door or window that can still be 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 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 Hal! was a 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 conquer ors of Ypres put her women and chil- dren to the sword but no one had even harmed the old Cloth Hall beyond talk 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 they could at the old stand. A visitor could get a meal in a restaurant or have his shoes cobbled. 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 a civic distinction. It was the historical soul of Ypres. The old frescoes on its walls told the city's early history. It meant to Ypres quite as much in its way as Westminster Abbey to London or Fanieul Hall to Boston. Every man or woman born in Ypres had been brought up to tell the time of day by the raised gilt figures OI the SOlGSu CLOCK race.
 By February the peoples sense of horror was 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 were still unharmed. And they said: The Cloth Hall still can be restored"--these stubborn Flemish who would not let shell fire drive
 The next time The Associated Press correspondent went to Ypres there was not a single house left on the Grande Place that resembled a house any more than a rubber bag with the gas out of it resembles a 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 their guns. Heretofore their practice on Ypres had been comparatively teas ing playfulness. This time they went at the job of destruction systemati- cally; jumping from one space on the checkerboard 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 confusion for British endorsements hurrying up along roads crowded with refugees: wholesale death for men in biiIets in town and destruction and delay for supplies and munitions coming through the streets. This was excellent theory which did not work out in practice The British were not billeting troops