The graves of our dead, the heroes of the two great battles which raged about this placid city, the dead of the fierce assaults, the daily toll of the trenches, lie in a vast semicircle about Ypres. Ypres was already a sacred name to us, while its towers and pinnacles yet stood, and life pulsated as of old in the congested streets of the quaint old town. Now, in its ruins heaped up in a funeral pyre over the corpses of its hapless civilians slain by German monster shells, it is, more than ever, a fane for ever holy to Englishmen, who in days to come shall know no greater pride than to say, “I was at Ypres!” It was in the chill wet days of October that our army first came to Ypres. We had fought the great battles of the Marne and the Aisne, and Sir John French had executed that wonderfully adroit and silent move from the Aisne to the left of the Allied line to hold the Germans off the Channel ports. The Seventh Division, fresh from its ineffectual attempt to save Antwerp--ineffectual because too late--had been placed under Sir John French’s orders and was operating eastward of Ypres. Sir Douglas Haig, beloved of Corps Commanders, Sir John French’s trusted Chief of Staff in South Africa, was sent to take his First Army Corps through Ypres towards Thourout, with the idea of sweeping the Germans eastward with the help of the French. Ypres, with its snug houses and intimate streets, must have made a comforting impression on our troops, the war-worn veterans of Mons, the Marne, and the Aisne, as they tramped in from beneath the sighing poplars of the Poperinghe road. The city yet sheltered people when our troops came through; moreover, the 87th French Territorial Division was billeted in the town. How many of the Englishmen, whose eyes were gladdened by the sight of the old-world houses and smiling prosperity of the ancient city, were destined never to return through the Menin Gate, beyond which in the wooded plain the greatest battle of the war was raging! In the churches and convents of the city, particularly in the Chapel of the Irish Ladies of Ypres, where was hanging the British standard captured by Clare’s Dragoons fighting with the French at Ramillies, many a prayer went up in those days for the army fighting so steadfastly without the city against overwhelming odds.