234 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 



gathered up look like the fantastically ugly coarse tresses of some gigantic 

 maenad. 



Even more pitiable were the towns which bore still some semblance of 

 life, just as a wounded creature inspires more compassion than one from 

 which life has departed. Arras, for example, of whose beauty some traces 

 remain in the picturesque great square and the adjoining Petite Place, with 

 its lovely Town Hall, evokes a more poignant sorrow than Albert, or even 

 Ypres, where the gaunt ruins of the Cloth Hall and Cathedral bear hideous 

 testimony to the destruction worked by modem war. In all that part of the 

 country the poor quality of the building materials have made the ruins most 

 unsightly. As the traveller goes further east he comes into a region where a fine 

 building-stone produces better houses and less unsightly ruins. But even there a 

 shell makes a very hideous wound, and the remains, such as they are, have none 

 of the dignity which Time bestows on human structures which have fallen 

 into decay under his more kindly hand. 



It forms no part of my subject to deal with the aesthetic side of the 

 question, but I cannot refrain from expressing the horror with which I saw 

 the ruins of Reims Cathedral. What has been said of the effect of shell- 

 fire is infinitely true of the appearance of this wonderful monument of human 

 art and human piety. Would it were possible to let it stand just as it is, 

 taking means to guard it from the weather and from further damage, but not 

 attempting to restore it t-o its pristine glory. The beautiful remains would 

 be a perpetual monument to the shame of those who brought this irreparable 

 injury to one of the most splendid examples of architectural art. 



There must be many hundred thousand acres of cultivated land, with the 

 apparatus required for its cultivation, which has been reduced to the condi- 

 tion I have endeavoured to picture. It is difficult to see how it can ever be 

 brought again into use at any early date. The mere clearing away of tlie 

 wire entanglements to which I have referred must be a costly operation. 

 Great quantities of shell abandoned by the Germans in their hasty retreat 

 still cumbered the ground they had occupied. These must be cai-efully 

 removed — not a very simple operation, and one which must be carried out 

 imder skilled direction. 



We saw numbers of ungainly tanks, the result of British ingenuity, left 

 where their valiant occupants had been compelled to quit them. At one place 

 we counted six of these in the space of a few acres. The removal of one of 

 them was being effected by a valid tank, which was hauling a derelict to some 

 place to be repaired or, more likely, to be broken up. I dwell on all this to try 

 to bring home to you what must be done before what was once a smiling, 

 prosperous countryside can be brought back to the state in which we saw 

 the land lying outside the battle area on either hand. 



Can anyone dcubt the huge destruction of wealth which has occurred ? But 

 it is really worse than it appears, for the very process of destruction was even 

 more costly than the damage done. Millions of tons of steel in the form of 

 guns and their projectiles — millions of lives had gone to produce this untoward 

 result. For fifty months all the energies of the most active and energetic 

 people on the globe had been turned from beneficial enterprise to such work 

 as that which produced the result I have sought to portray to you. 



When all these things are considered it is not surprising to find our estimate 

 of the cost of the war readies a total the mind cannot gi'asp. When you begin 

 to speak of pounds by thousands of millions the difference between twenty-five 

 and forty is hardly noticeable. But be the sum larger or smaller, the all- 

 important fact to be borne in mind is that the wealth which it represents has 

 passed out of being. 



So much confusion exists on this subject that it is worth while dwelling 

 on it for a moment. Some contend that there has been a mere change of 

 wealth from one ownership to another. Into whose possession, may we ask, 

 has passed the wealth which used to exist in the towns and villages and 

 cultivated land of the battle area? It is true that the steel which went to 

 effect this destruction has been paid for, but from what source has that payment 

 come? Lret us think what might have happened but for the war. The steel 

 might have made rails and been laid on a railway to bring the produce of 



