A CONTRAST IN TYPES

There is a small cemetery close to the church of Adinkerke, near Furnes, where the peasants and fishermen who lived in that village used to find a peaceful rest after a long and busy life. Here, among the civilians, close to the iron paling, is the simple tomb of our great national poet, Emile Verhaeren. The cemetery has been enlarged to make room for some of the boys whom Belgium has lost since the battle of the Yser. Only those who died of wounds in the neighbouring hospitals are buried here, and similar cemeteries can be found closer to the front and in the rear as far as Calais. I have walked through these rows of graves, standing close together, and read there many familiar names on many simple crosses. Rich men, poor men, students, and labourers, some who fought since Liège, others who had come from the occupied provinces. Every tomb bears a number, and before I had reached the end of the last row I counted 2,000 of them. There are, indeed, many more things happening than the official communiqués allow us to dream of.

I have just said that the tomb of Verhaeren is at Adinkerke, but his body is no longer there. Owing to the frequent German air raids to which the village has been subjected lately, the poet’s friends have had the coffin transported to a safer place, if any place can be called “safe” in independent Belgium. For there is not a town in this region which has not received some German shell. Furnes itself, which used to be King Albert’s headquarters, has had to be abandoned, not only by the soldiers, but even by the charitable British ladies who used to comfort and help the wounded and destitute civilians. The picturesque old marketplace, once a scene of great animation, is deserted, and grass grows between its cobble-stones.