THE YPRES TIMES I HAVE been in prison, not once, but many times, always, I must tell you, living up to a profound aversion for variety by going to the same place of incarceration. This jail of mine would have been a place of delight to the hardened criminal, for it was not a lockfast place of detention, such as you may read abo.ut, or even hear of secondhand from those who pass the time of day with frequenters of such places. It had no bolts and few bars, and I can say with certainty that there were no walls to speak of, for no man, however given to exaggeration, could fittingly describe the mounds of powdered rubble which surrounded the prison as prison walls. Perhaps the mounds had once dignified the jail as high-class barricades of brick and mortar, but if that be so, some more than ordinary upheaval had visited the place, for it was easy to see that the powdered masonry had not been reduced to that lamentable state directly by the hand of man. You walked into this prison if not of your own free will at least with something of the gait of a man who is not bound to enter if he wills otherwise. This I do know, you entered without the guidance and restraining arms of gentlemen in blue or other men of the Crown who have to do with prisons. Now this will strike you as being funny you could walk out again if you willed,, and no one would say you nay. Yet you would not roam farat least, you would not roam far to the north, for men died daily in the low-lying lands thereabouts. I hated night in my prison cell. Night in prison is a time when the searchings of conscience probe beyond the veil of make-believe, and a man stands pitifully before himself as he really is, a piece of human frailty devoid of all the trimmings of affectation. But I should tell you that it was not the twinges of a guilty conscience that made night hateful to me, for I had little or no conscience, and little or no time to be bothered with such a thing. Nearer and more material things obtruded themselves on me. For one thing, there were many noises which seemed to intensify with the coming of the night, and engendered in you, if you were human at all, that unpleasant mental condition which the facetious describe as windy." In the stillness of the night when noise carries far, there would be borne to my ears strange rushing, tearing sounds which culminated in explosions that very often would cause the jail to rock. Aeroplanes continually droned overhead, accompanied by much whistle-blowing and shouting in the streets nearby, and to crown allto give tone to the thingthis untuneful noise was for ever being diligently embellished by the clean-cut, well-articulated oaths of the multitudes of transport drivers who paused, so it seemed to me, beside the prison to give vent to their feelings before passing on. And all through the night this query drove sleep awayDo I die to-morrow Do I die to-morrow and to-morrow always answered as to-morrow ever will. Ypres prison was a grim place, housing grim men during the years of which I write, for it sheltered for one night only many of those who had to enter the trenches next day. From that charnel house of hope and aspiration there passed on to a muddy tomb thousands of those who had been gathered from the four corners of the earth to defend an ideal which the passing years have caused us to lose sight of. Would that the gods made it possible for us to enrich ourselves with the collated thoughts of those men, garnered from Ypres prison on the night before they crossed the divide. What a touch of human wisdom it would prove to a world which dies slowly bv its own hand. Have you ever looked back from the trenches to where Ypres lay A monument to Man's savagery, Yet a barrier to his greed." and wondered if it would ever rise again from its ashes to house those to whom it right fully belonged Have you ever, as you stood knee-deep before the breastworkswet,

HISTORISCHE KRANTEN

The Ypres Times (1921-1936) | 1933 | | pagina 14