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The Ypres Times.
YPRES LEAGUE NEWS.
By THE SECRETARY.
After four years of .war and three of peace the little paper which was famous throughout
the British Army as the Wipers Times resumes publication as the organ of the Ypres
League.
It appears no longer as a trench journal. It is not now produced within the sound
of guns and falling masonry. But much of this issue was actually written in Ypres.
At the same time, the spirit which evokes it, the sentiment underlying the revival,
is not that of the New Ypresthe town born since the war, nor yet that of the Old Ypres,
the city of history and legend, but of that other YPRES, greater and nobler and more
durable than either, the YPRES grey, shattered, mystical and awe-inspiring, which lives
in every soldier's memorythe Mecca of our pilgrim war-thoughts, the scene pf our
bloodiest trial, the sepulchre of our bravest dead.
No soldier can get away from Ypres. As a captain writes from Northern Nigeria
It will always be with us. One cannot describe the feeling, something
akin to possession or belonging therewhich steals across the spirit of one
of the old crowd. Certainly, all who were there are brothers, and (in the language
of the bard), Gentlemen of England now abed shall think themselves accurst
they were not there.'
I can still feel the emotion with which I used to get through the square to
the battery."
Ypres, at all events, is a shrine, a holy place to at least a million persons in our Empire
who were never there. They certainly will never forget what their dead did and suffered
in that enclave.
As for us, we hope to see the day when a stately belfry shall uprear itself above that
mighty battle-ground, when at evening a peal of English bells shall chime an English
anthem where those our heroes sleep, when the honest Flemish peasant returning from
peaceful toil, listening to the melody, may bless anew the memory of these sons of the
far-flung British Empire who were faithful to the last, who defended with their lives this
last fragment then remaining of Belgian soil.
The Ypres Times aims to be, like the League itself, a medium for the wide spiritual
fellowship whose symbol and watchword is Ypres," whether spelt (to borrow the phrase
of Mr. Weller, Senior), with a Wee or a Y."
We shall be glad to answer any questions relating to the defence of the city, and to
the individuals composing that defence, and we will rejoice to print any narrative which
sheds light on the annals of war-time Y-pers,
