As I watched the flames, I knew that each one of those poor burning towns was the ruin of something more than bricks and mortar.  It was the ruin of a people’s ideals, fulfilled throughout centuries of quiet progress in arts and crafts.  It was the shattering of all those things for which they praised God in their churches—­the good gifts of home-life, the security of the family, the impregnable stronghold, as it seemed, of prosperity built by labour and thrift now utterly destroyed.

15

I motored over to Nieuport-les-Bains, the seaside resort of the town of Nieuport itself, which is a little way from the coast.  It was one of those Belgian watering-places much beloved by the Germans before their guns knocked it to bits—­a row of red-brick villas with a few pretentious hotels utterly uncharacteristic of the Flemish style of architecture, lining a promenade and built upon the edge of dreary and monotonous sand-dunes.  On this day the place and its neighbourhood were utterly and terribly desolate.  The only human beings I passed on my car were two seamen of the British Navy, who were fixing up a wireless apparatus on the edge of the sand.  They stared at our ambulances curiously, and one of them gave me a prolonged and strenuous wink, as though to say, “A fine old game, mate, this bloody war!” Beyond, the sea was very calm, like liquid lead, and a slight haze hung over it, putting a gauzy veil about a line of British and French monitors which lay close to the coast.  Not a soul could be seen along the promenade of Nieuport-les-Bains, but the body of a man—­a French marine—­whose soul had gone in flight upon the great adventure of eternity, lay at the end of it with his sightless eyes staring up to the grey sky.  Presently I was surprised to see an elderly civilian and a small boy come out of one of the houses.  The man told me he was the proprietor of the Grand Hotel, “but,” he added, with a gloomy smile, “I have no guests at this moment In a little while, perhaps my hotel will have gone also.”  He pointed to a deep hole ploughed up an hour ago by a German “Jack Johnson.”  It was deep enough to bury a taxicab.

For some time, as I paced up and down the promenade, there was no answer to the mighty voices of the naval guns firing from some British warships lying along the coast.  Nor did any answer come for some time to a French battery snugly placed in a hollow of the dunes, screened by a few trees.  I listened to the overwhelming concussion of each shot from the ships, wondering at the mighty flight of the shell, which travelled through the air with the noise of an express train rushing through a tunnel.  It was curious that no answer came!  Surely the German batteries beyond the river would reply to that deadly cannonade.

I had not long to wait for the inevitable response.  It came with a shriek, and a puff of bluish smoke, as the German shrapnel burst a hundred yards from where I stood.  It was followed by several shells which dropped into the dunes, not far from the French battery of cent-vingt.  Another knocked off the gable of a villa.