I had intended to write down a full description of the country immediately behind our present line.  The Skipper, for fear we should become stale, allowed us plenty of leave.  We would make little expeditions to Bethune for the baths, spend an afternoon riding round Armentieres, or run over to Poperinghe for a chop.  We even arranged for a visit to the Belgian lines, but that excursion was forbidden by a new order.  Right through the winter we had “unrivalled opportunities”—­as the journalists would say—­of becoming intimate with that strip of Flanders which extends from Ypres to Bethune.  Whether I can or may describe it is a matter for care.  A too affectionate description of the neighbourhood of Wulverghem, for instance, would be unwise.  But I see no reason why I should not state as a fact that a most excellent dry Martini could be obtained in Ypres up to the evening of April 22.

Wretched Ypres has been badly over-written.  Before the war it was a pleasant city, little visited by travellers because it lay on a badly served branch line.  The inhabitants tell me it was never much troubled with tourists.  One burgher explained the situation to me with a comical mixture of sentiment and reason.

“You see, sir, that our Cathedral is shattered and the Cloth Hall a ruin.  May those devils, the dirty Germans, roast in Hell!  But after the war we shall be the richest city in Belgium.  All England will flock to Ypres.  Is it not a monstrous cemetery?  Are there not woods and villages and farms at which the brave English have fought like lions to earn for themselves eternal fame, and for the city an added glory?  The good God gives His compensations after great wars.  There will be many to buy our lace and fill our restaurants.”

Mr John Buchan and Mr Valentine Williams and others have “written up” Ypres.  The exact state of the Cloth Hall at any given moment is the object of solicitude.  The shattered Belgian homes have been described over and over again.  The important things about Ypres have been left unsaid.

Near the station there was a man who really could mix cocktails.  He was no blundering amateur, but an expert with the subtlest touch.  And in the Rue de Lille a fashionable dressmaker turned her atelier into a tea-room.  She used to provide coffee or chocolate, or even tea, and the most delicious little cakes.  Of an afternoon you would sit on comfortable chairs at a neat table covered with a fair cloth and talk to your hostess.  A few hats daintily remained on stands, but, as she said, they were last year’s hats, unworthy of our notice.