In order to envisage the future of Ypres, it is necessary to get a clear general conception of the damage done to it.  Ypres is not destroyed.  I should estimate that when I saw it in July at least half the houses in it were standing entire, and, though disfigured, were capable of being rapidly repaired.  Thousands of the humble of Ypres could return to their dwellings and resume home-life there with little trouble, provided that the economic situation was fairly favourable—­and, of course, sooner or later the economic situation is bound to be favourable, for the simple reason that it must ultimately depend upon the exertions of a people renowned throughout the world for hard and continuous industry.

On the other hand, practically all that was spectacular in the city, all the leading, all the centre round which civic activities had grouped themselves for centuries, is destroyed.  Take the Grande Place.  If Ypres is to persist in a future at all comparable to its immediate past (to say nothing of its historic past), the privately owned buildings on the Grande Place will, without exception, have to be begun all over again, and before that task can be undertaken the foundations will have to be cleared—­a tremendous undertaking in itself.  I do not know how many privately owned buildings there were on the Grande Place, but I will guess a hundred and fifty, probably none of which was less than three stories in height.  All these buildings belonged to individuals, individuals who intimately possessed them and counted on them as a source of income or well-being, individuals who are now scattered, impoverished, and acutely discouraged.  The same is to be said of the Rue de Lille and of other important streets.

Suppose the Germans back again in the land of justice, modesty, and unselfishness; and suppose the property-owners of Ypres collected once more in Ypres.  The enterprise of reconstruction facing them will make such a demand of initiative force and mere faith as must daunt the most audacious among them.  And capital dragged out of a bankrupt Germany will by no means solve the material problem.  For labour will be nearly as scarce as money; the call for labour in every field cannot fail to surpass in its urgency any call in history.  The simple contemplation of the gigantic job will be staggering.  To begin with, the withered and corrupt dead will have to be excavated from the cellars, and when that day comes those will be present who can say:  “This skeleton was So-and-So’s child,” “That must have been my mother.”  Terrific hours await Ypres.  And when (or if) the buildings have been re-erected, tenants will have to be found for them—­and then think of the wholesale refurnishing!  The deep human instinct which attaches men and women to a particular spot of the earth’s surface is so powerful that almost certainly the second incarnation of Ypres will be initiated, but that it will be carried very far towards completion seems to me to be somewhat doubtful.  To my mind the new Ypres cannot be more than a kind of camp amid the dark ruins of the old, and the city must remain for generations, if not for ever, a ghastly sign and illustration of what cupidity and stupidity and vanity can compass together when physical violence is their instrument.