The official despatches and many war books have told about the salient, about the terrible hardships and the brave doings of our soldiers there, and those of our Allies who were with us. But they do not, because they cannot, tell us what was going on within the walls of the city itself, during those first months of the siege, while the unfortunate inhabitants were still trying to live there, hoping--one supposes--from each day to the next that the bombardment would finally come to an end. Something, however, we know of this from the account of men who were there, either as soldiers or in the Red Cross service, on equally dangerous duty. But among the civilians who were neither one nor the other the names especially of two out of many will always live in the war history of Ypres, remembered for their devotion and heroism--Sister Marguerite and Father Charles Delaere. Father Delaere was the Curé of Ypres in 1914, later on he became Doyen, and not long ago a letter from him told me that he had been made a Canon. Sister Marguerite is a native of Ypres, and was, as a nun, attached to the Convent of St. Marie, engaged largely in teaching at the outbreak of the war. Her simple duties were suddenly changed; she became not only nurse and even doctor, but carpenter, fireman, baker, barber, shoemaker--all trades! Above all, she was the universal friend and helper of the poor creatures who were incapable of helping themselves, for whom she found shelter while herself without any, and whose children she mothered when their parents lay buried under the ruins of their homes, or dying in whatever buildings served at the time for a hospital. The Journal[7] kept by Sister Marguerite, and published in 1918 by her permission for Red Cross benefit, gives a picture of life--or existence--in Ypres during the first eight months of its siege. It is so vivid, and at the same time so simply told, that (as I fear that copies of the Journal may no longer be obtainable) I make no apology for quoting from it. It is the poignant story of war as it appeared to a woman suddenly called out of a life of peaceful work to face its realities in their grimmest form, to do so without the excitement of fighting and without the comradeship of the regiment, or even the use of the soldierly mask of humour, to cover up the unrecordable reality. [7] "Journal d'une Sœur d'Ypres, October, 1914, to May, 1915." The Germans actually entered Ypres on the 7th of October, the first day on which any shells fell on the town, and one civilian was killed in his own room. But the children on that day amused themselves afterwards by picking up the shrapnel bullets! After the Germans were turned out a week later, one of their companies was found to have left behind a characteristic notice: "Les Allemands craignent Dieu et hors Lui nulle chose au monde." They had succeeded in doing a fair amount of pillaging, as well as making heavy requisitions, during their few days of occupation.