June 21st.

On the road from Cassel to Poperinghe.  Heat, dust, crowds, confusion, all the sordid shabby rear-view of war.  The road running across the plain between white-powdered hedges was ploughed up by numberless motor-vans, supply-waggons and Red Cross ambulances.  Labouring through between them came detachments of British artillery, clattering gun-carriages, straight young figures on glossy horses, long Phidian lines of youths so ingenuously fair that one wondered how they could have looked on the Medusa face of war and lived.  Men and beasts, in spite of the dust, were as fresh and sleek as if they had come from a bath; and everywhere along the wayside were improvised camps, with tents made of waggon-covers, where the ceaseless indomitable work of cleaning was being carried out in all its searching details.  Shirts were drying on elder-bushes, kettles boiling over gypsy fires, men shaving, blacking their boots, cleaning their guns, rubbing down their horses, greasing their saddles, polishing their stirrups and bits:  on all sides a general cheery struggle against the prevailing dust, discomfort and disorder.  Here and there a young soldier leaned against a garden paling to talk to a girl among the hollyhocks, or an older soldier initiated a group of children into some mystery of military housekeeping; and everywhere were the same signs of friendly inarticulate understanding with the owners of the fields and gardens.

From the thronged high-road we passed into the emptiness of deserted Poperinghe, and out again on the way to Ypres.  Beyond the flats and wind-mills to our left were the invisible German lines, and the staff-officer who was with us leaned forward to caution our chauffeur:  “No tooting between here and Ypres.”  There was still a good deal of movement on the road, though it was less crowded with troops than near Poperinghe; but as we passed through the last village and approached the low line of houses ahead, the silence and emptiness widened about us.  That low line was Ypres; every monument that marked it, that gave it an individual outline, is gone.  It is a town without a profile.

The motor slipped through a suburb of small brick houses and stopped under cover of some slightly taller buildings.  Another military motor waited there, the chauffeur relic-hunting in the gutted houses.

We got out and walked toward the centre of the Cloth Market.  We had seen evacuated towns—­Verdun, Badonviller, Raon-l’Etape—­but we had seen no emptiness like this.  Not a human being was in the streets.  Endless lines of houses looked down on us from vacant windows.  Our footsteps echoed like the tramp of a crowd, our lowered voices seemed to shout.  In one street we came on three English soldiers who were carrying a piano out of a house and lifting it onto a hand-cart.  They stopped to stare at us, and we stared back.  It seemed an age since we had seen a living being!  One of the soldiers scrambled into the cart and tapped out a tune on the cracked key-board, and we all laughed with relief at the foolish noise...  Then we walked on and were alone again.