"Och slowly, man, slowly. They Chairmans didna leave muckle when they went awa!" * * * * * And six years ago the Army continued to fall back. Zeebruges whence it had started, Bruges and Ostende, and Ghent which it had marched through, became enemy country without much shedding of blood. No one stood long for their defence. After Roulers the name of a much less famous place than Bruges or Ghent came on to men's lips. Did they know that they were going to stand for the defence of it? No, it is all unlikely. And as they marched to Ypres they providentially did not know the four years' hell of which they trod the stage. War all over by Christmas was their thought if they thought at all as they marched o'er the ridge of Passchendaele in October, 1914. The soldier, it is said, has an elementary mind which does not imagine, does not think--a regimental mind. Others therefore must think about him and do the thinking for him. See, the dusty khaki-clad regulars as yet unbaptised by fire, but unknowingly on the brink of annihilation, treading the ground where Few shall part where many meet... And every turf beneath their feet Shall be a soldier's sepulchre. Thus they marched into Ypres--"as pretty a town as you'd care to see after a day's march." Oh, it's highly romantic to look back to it now. Banners yellow, glorious golden, On its roof did float and flow. This, all this, was in the olden time Long ago. The business centre of Ypres was invested with a dignity which was not merely commercial in those old days when the silver chimes rolled regularly the quarter-hours from the Cloth Hall tower. And the Army arrived, the army for the defence of Ypres. They will dig trenches and throw out wire south of Ypres, looking at Kemmel without knowing its name, walking on Hill 60 before it was numbered and named.