A GREAT DAY IN FLANDERS

LIBERATED TOWNS

The enemy has apparently abandoned Lille and Tourcoing, these great industrial towns of Northern France which he held so long as his trumpcards in the devil’s gamble of this war, and we are following him up. We have taken Lombartzyde, on the coast, and have captured Ostend. From one end of the line to the other, the German armies are in retreat from great portions of France and Belgium, and it is a landslide of all their ambitions and their military power. Today I have seen scenes of history of which many people have been dreaming through all these years of war, until at last they were sick with deferred hope. I have seen Belgian and French soldiers riding through liberated towns, cheered by people who have been prisoners of war in their own houses for all these dreary years under hostile rule which was sometimes cruel and always hard, so that their joy now is wonderful to see, and makes something break in one’s heart at the sight of it, because one understands by these women’s faces, by the light in children’s eyes, and by the tears of old, gnarled men, what this rescue means to them, and what they suffered. I have not yet been into Lille, where the first news of the enemy’s flight was received by our airmen today, who saw people signalling to them with their handkerchiefs, waving frantically to give some message. After that a civilian came over to our lines and said: “You can go in. The enemy has gone in the night.”

PRIZE OF MANY VICTORIES

This regaining of Lille is the most wonderful occurrence since the combined offensive of the Allies on the Western front began in August last, and is the prize of many victories won by the heroism of young officers and men and by the fine strategy of Marshal Foch, whose brain has been behind all these movements of men. This morning, I went again over the old belt of battlefields out from Ypres and beyond Passchendaele, through, which the combined armies of Belgium, France, and Britain struggled and surged to keep up with their vanguards. Over the shell craters and the rutted roads, sometimes axle-deep in mud, in slow columns of turbulent traffic poured our guns and transport of the three nations, following up the pursuit, bringing food and ammunition and men and more men. The pursuit is not a dashing charge. Men shout to each other in three tongues to clear the way and ease their feelings by furious shouts and gusts of laughter because it is all so slow. But it is too fast for the enemy. Before he is ready to leave our men are on his heel. Our horse artillery is firing along his tracks before he can escape with his heavy loads. His rearguards are captured before the main body is out of danger. It is very slow, this pursuit, when seen from our side of things, but as quick as a hurrying death to masses of German soldiers. It quickens beyond the old deep belt of strife, for beyond that there are good roads, except where the Germans have blown great craters, and this morning I went for many miles through country where there are unshelled fields, where there are cabbage patches, and neat farmsteads, and cottage gardens, and villages with red-tiled roofs, and houses with glass windows, unbroken glass, by all the gods, so that it seems like precious jewels to eyes tired of rubbish heaps that were fair towns like Ypres. In one small Flemish town to which I went this morning – Iseghem, between Courtrai and Thielt – a long column of Belgian gunners drove through the streets, and they were received as conquering heroes by 3,000 of their country people, who lined the pavements and looked out of the windows of upper storeys and stood in their thresholds.

JOYOUS BELGIANS

Almost every house flew a Belgian flag, hidden in the cellars for four years until this day should come, and women and children ran into the roadway and gave flags to the Belgian gunners, who hung them on their limbers. I think I must have been the first man in khaki to be seen by these Belgian people since their rescue by French and Belgians, for I shared an ovation with a French officer who was with me. “Vive la France” and “Vive l’angleterre” were cried out by old men and women and young girls and children. Every man and boy waved his cap. I spoke with some young priests who are professors at college there, and asked them some questions. How had the Germans behaved? What did they think of things? “Sir,” said one of these priests, in good English, “I cannot tell you what we have suffered. I dare not tell you, lest I should break down and weep, which would be bad on a day of joy. The Germans were hard with us. We had no liberty of any kind and were under an iron oppression. There were good Germans among those in this town. Let us tell the truth about that. There were men who hated war and its cruelty, but it is their education and their military system which makes them brutal and unsensitive to human suffering. The officers, were worse, and in spite of iron discipline which made their men salute them with rigid faces, these German soldiers hate their officers, with a deadly and fierce hatred, and one day will wreak their vengeance.”