(PLATES 43 TO 50.)

Arras was in the possession of the Germans for three days in September, 1914, but they evacuated it in their retreat after the first battle of the Marne. It was only by very plucky fighting, however, that the French were able to keep them even a mile or two away, and for a long time they remained at St. Laurent-Blangy, which is practically in the north-eastern suburbs of the town. In October, 1914, therefore, they were only a couple of miles away, and from this short distance the centre of the city was bombarded severely by heavy artillery. The beautiful HÔtel de Ville and the belfry were destroyed, and the centre of the city generally much injured, as the view from above (Plate 43, an official photograph) shows very painfully. In April, 1916, the British being then in this zone, Arras was practically "cleared," the enemy being forced backwards for six miles. In the offensive of March, 1918, the Germans succeeded in getting two miles closer in on the south, but to the north the 1916 positions were held, and the enemy was finally driven twelve miles away towards Cambrai in our August offensive in 1918.

Outside the centre of the city the damage did not appear—when I first visited it while it was still under occasional long-range shell-fire—to be nearly so great as in the centre. Many houses were standing and at least more or less habitable, if windowless, and a few poor shops in the outskirts had started business. But published statistics indicate that more than half the houses are damaged beyond possibility of reconstruction. The cathedral, which is altogether in ruins (Plate 44), is an eighteenth-century basilica, and is happily not one of the glories of France. Some of the columns of the main arcade, standing by themselves with a piece of architrave still remaining in place, reminded one a little of the two beautiful Roman columns still standing on the stage of the theatre at Arles. A notice stood beside the ruins in 1918—I think it is still there—to the effect that it was intended to leave them unrestored to form an enduring reminder of the Huns. I hope it is not disrespectful for a great lover of French Gothic architecture to say that probably this particular building may really be more impressive in its ruined condition than it can ever have been when it was standing.

It was really remarkable to find in 1919 that the half-ruined town was already full of people going to and from the station, and obviously doing their best to carry on in spite of the surrounding conditions. We lunched at an hotel showing very many signs of dilapidation, but obviously serving a very considerable number of customers—quite a cheering sight.

I am not likely soon to forget a drive from Cambrai to Arras, on a very dark night, by by-roads which our Engineers had not yet visited, and while traffic regulations still prohibited even the very feeble illumination which could be obtained from an official headlamp. But the discomfort was much mitigated by the pleasure of watching a fine display of miscellaneous coloured fires to the south of our line, due to the discovery by our Tommies that the Germans had left large stores of signal lights behind in their retreat!

On from Arras to Cambrai runs the road which is the continuation of the Cambrai-Le Cateau road. It goes straight and level over fine rolling uplands like a Scotch moor, but with grass and herbage instead of heather, and (in 1918) with endless craters, trenches, and entanglements, and no hills in sight except the ridges away to the north left far behind.

The Vimy Ridge (Plate 45) rises at Bailleul, five miles north-east of Arras, and continues in a north-westerly direction for about the same distance to Givenchy.[20] It is steep on its eastern side and gently sloping on the western, and the highest part of the ridge is about 200 feet above the lower land to the east. The height is not great, but is amply sufficient to give the forces occupying it complete observation over the surrounding country in all directions. I was on it first on a brilliant afternoon in 1918, when the Germans were still trying to make a stand a little east of Lens. Away somewhere in the direction of Douai a great explosion was followed by a column of white smoke, brilliant in the sunshine, and spreading out into a huge white flower 3,000 feet above the ground—clearly a huge German "dump" blown up to prevent it falling into our hands. Below us a battery of field-guns was pounding away at the German lines, still only two or three miles beyond them. A German 'plane came in sight, engaged in the singularly futile business of dropping "propaganda" literature from a height which kept it out of the reach of 13-pounders. From away over Lens, where under a dark cloud the Germans were still trying, in despair, to avoid their Nemesis, came the dull noise of the fighting. Behind the ridge lay the shell-marked slopes up which the Canadians rushed in April, 1917, and from which afterwards even the wild German push of a year later failed to move us. In the distance behind the ridge towards the west stood the tower of Mont St. Eloi, battered about in fighting from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth; and having now again seen the Prussians on the soil of its country, and surely rejoicing—even as inanimate masonry—when at last "der Tag" had arrived, and the land had become once more its own, with peace and victory not far away.

The capture of the somewhat higher Lorette Ridge (a continuation of the Vimy Ridge across the gap at Souchez) in 1915 was one of the finest achievements of the French Army; the position was enormously strong and most stiffly defended. The ridge, with its commanding observation to the north, was held against all counter-attacks until the war was over. The northern portion of the Vimy Ridge, however, which was taken at the same time, could not be held. It was eventually taken by the Canadians in April, 1917, under General Byng (now Lord Byng "of Vimy"), after great preparations, for its possession by the Germans had put us under much disadvantage. Mining operations on a very great scale formed part of the scheme of attack. Plate 46 is a view of one of the largest of the mine craters on the ridge above Neuville St. Vaast, near the elaborate defences known as the "Labyrinth." The well-concealed German gun-emplacements below the ridge (of which Plate 47 shows one of a number at Thelus) had given us great trouble and caused much loss. They were all taken with the ridge, and henceforth the guns from Vimy fired in the opposite direction.

Over the country, trÈs accidentÉe, west of the ridge one might have thought oneself, in 1918, as in some queerly altered part of England. At all the principal road-crossings men in khaki regulated the traffic, everywhere were conspicuous public notices in English, and in the villages the shops exhibited signs such as "Tommy's House," "EntrÉe libre," or—very frequently—"Eggs and Chips." But driving eastwards through this green and pleasant country and the busy villages one came with startling suddenness and with a drawing of one's breath upon the wilderness. Here, just as north and east of Amiens, villages ceased to be; only disconnected bits of brickwork and general ruin were left, very often not even so much, and nothing but a large painted signboard with a name on it gave any indication whatever of the site of a village. Gardens and fields were all one mass of ragged, chalky shell-holes overgrown with hateful-looking weeds. Trees had disappeared. Only the roads themselves had been engineered into something like decent condition by the levelling up of shell-holes and the clearing away to the sides of brick and timber dÉbris. At a later time the timber had been utilised either for construction or for firing, and the bricks were being systematically cleaned and trimmed and stacked for use in the reconstruction that has been continued since with ever-increasing rapidity.

The villages—Gavrelle and others—on the Valenciennes road east of Arras are practically blotted out, but the towns farther east, which were out of the fighting area, are not much, if at all, damaged structurally. But no doubt the Germans either destroyed or stole all the machinery and industrial appliances they could lay their hands on, in the benevolent desire to ruin French industry for the benefit of their own, for which Lille and Tournai and Roubaix have had to pay so dearly.

From Arras to Lens runs northward the ten miles of straight road, crossing the Vimy Ridge on the way (Plate 48), down which our people must have so often looked on the little town which, until the very end of the war, resisted all attempts of our Allies or of ourselves to enter it. The photograph was taken from outside Lens, looking towards the ridge, which forms the higher ground in the distance.

Lens itself, a prosperous little town having in 1914 some 28,000 inhabitants, in the centre of the French coal-mining district, is one of the many places which, unimportant even within its own country and quite unknown beyond it, has now become a name familiar over the whole world. It was occupied by the Germans in October, 1914, and was almost continually fought for until the British finally entered it four years later. It became eventually the centre of a very narrow salient which covered even its suburbs, but the town itself, drenched with gas and horrible to stay in, held out bravely to the end.

The town is destroyed as thoroughly as Ypres, and more completely than any other place in France. Some idea of the state of Lens early in 1919 is given by Mr. Basil Mott's photograph (Plate 49), taken when it was under snow.

The town is too large to be entirely wiped out, as the villages are, and converted into chalk-pits and shell-holes. But standing on the mound which once was the Church of St. LÉger, or on any other point of vantage, one saw in 1919 nothing but a waste of bricks and stones and timber (Plate 50), with no semblance of standing buildings beyond the sheds which had been put up in some space sufficiently cleared to allow of their erection. If one had not seen so much appalling destruction in so many places it would have been unbelievable that a town larger than Bedford or Doncaster should be as entirely turned into small fragments as if some gigantic harrow had been drawn across it.

In 1920 I found that a considerable amount of rebuilding had taken place, although still by far the greater part of the town remained in ruins.

To the west of Lens, northwards and southwards, the whole country is given up to coal-mining. The mines, as everyone knows, were destroyed wantonly, and with great thoroughness, by the Germans. It must be years before they can be working fully again, but the French have not lost much time in taking steps to reinstate them. Even while fighting was still going on a few miles away, I found that in a large colliery near Givenchy (LiÉvin), where an "Archy" section was at work, and where the whole of the buildings and the pithead work were a mass of ruins, pumping machinery was already at work, and the water pumped up was being utilised in the neighbourhood.

In 1920 a good many of the pits were actually at work, and on the roads one welcomed the familiar sight of miners going to and from their work. The colliery villages (LiÉvin is nearly as large as Lens) had at first sight a very deceptive appearance of substantiality, but closer inspection showed that what seemed to be uninjured terraces of cottages were nothing much more than bare and roofless walls. Later on one found these ruins being blown up in order to clear the ground, as well as to provide bricks for rebuilding.

General Haig adopted in this neighbourhood, in 1917, a system of feint attacks which he describes as quite successful in their object, although they had the disadvantage that they frequently prevented him from denying German accounts of the bloody repulse of British attacks which in fact had never occurred at all! The most noteworthy of these feint attacks took place near LiÉvin, as to which he says:—

From Lens eastwards towards Lille the surface destruction diminishes rapidly. Trees have been cut down (probably in 1918), but cultivation seems to have gone on uninterruptedly—for the benefit of the invader, of course—during the war.