YPRES.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 16205, 7 May 1918, Page 9

YPRES.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE rBES3." Sir, —In your war notes ihis morning you state that Ypres to-day is a heap of dust and broken stones: that thero is hardly one stone left standing on another. Ido not think things arc quite so had as you suggest. and would . quoto the following extract from a. letter rcceivcd by mo from a New Zealand medicnl officer, dated December 12th, - 1917:— "I am at present stationed in one of the most famous towns in Europe, and tj -vesterday I attended Divitio service in (, its Cloth Hall."—Yours, etc., * 1.5.8. ' ATay Gth. [Our authority was u despatch dated December 20th last year, from the Associated Press correspondent behind the British lines in Fiance. He stated, inter alia, that after the bombardment of Ypres by the Germans in November, 1914, tho Cloth Hall "was a roofless skeleton; only its cellars remained intact." After the IoW and heavy bombardment in April and May, 1915, "it was 1 hardly possible to find one's way through tho town. Houses and ' streets had all melted together in heaps of rubbish." Among - the ruins by which the more important buildings had stood the correspondent mentioned "a scarred fragment of the Clotli Hall." _ Last • year tho Germans are described as completing their work of destruction" by "turning heavy armourpiercing shells against the pathetic ruins. By the end of July there was literally nothing left except dust and broken stones." —Ed. v . - "The Press."!