on the great steps of arras cathedral i saw a procession, in silence, standing still.
they were in orderly and perfect lines, stirring or swaying slightly: sometimes they bent their heads, sometimes two leaned together, but for the most part they were motionless. it was the time when the fashion is just changing and some were newly all in shining yellow, while others still wore green.
i went up the steps amongst them, the only human thing, for men and women worship no more in arras cathedral, and the trees have come instead; little humble things, all less than four years old, in great numbers thronging the steps processionally, and growing in perfect rows just where step meets step. they have come to arras with the wind and the rain; which enter the aisles together whenever they will, and go wherever man went; they have such a reverent air, the young limes on the three flights of steps, that you would say they did not know that arras cathedral was fallen on evil days, that they did not know they looked on ruin and vast disaster, but thought that these great walls open to stars and sun were the natural and fitting place for the worship of little weeds.
behind them the shattered houses of arras seemed to cluster about the cathedral as, one might fancy easily, hurt and frightened children, so wistful are their gaping windows and old, grey empty gables, so melancholy and puzzled. they are more like a little old people come upon trouble, gazing at their great elder companion and not knowing what to do.
but the facts of arras are sadder than a poet's most tragic fancies. in the western front of arras cathedral stand eight pillars rising from the ground; above them stood four more. of the four upper pillars the two on the left are gone, swept away by shells from the north: and a shell has passed through the neck of one of the two that is left, just as a bullet might go through a daffodil's stem.
the left-hand corner of that western wall has been caught from the north, by some tremendous shell which has torn the whole corner down in a mound of stone: and still the walls have stood.
i went in through the western doorway. all along the nave lay a long heap of white stones, with grass and weeds on the top, and a little trodden path over the grass and weeds. this is all that remained of the roof of arras cathedral and of any chairs or pews there may have been in the nave, or anything that may have hung above them. it was all down but one slender arch that crossed the nave just at the transept; it stood out against the sky, and all who saw it wondered how it stood.
in the southern aisle panes of green glass, in twisted frame of lead, here and there lingered, like lonely leaves on an apple-tree-after a hailstorm in spring. the aisles still had their roofs over them which those stout old walls held up in spite of all.
where the nave joins the transept the ruin is most enormous. perhaps there was more to bring down there, so the germans brought it down: there may have been a tower there, for all i know, or a spire.
i stood on the heap and looked towards the altar. to my left all was ruin. to my right two old saints in stone stood by the southern door. the door had been forced open long ago, and stood as it was opened, partly broken. a great round hole gaped in the ground outside; it was this that had opened the door.
just beyond the big heap, on the left of the chancel, stood something made of wood, which almost certainly had been the organ.
as i looked at these things there passed through the desolate sanctuaries, and down an aisle past pillars pitted with shrapnel, a sad old woman, sad even for a woman of north-east france. she seemed to be looking after the mounds and stones that had once been the cathedral; perhaps she had once been the bishop's servant, or the wife of one of the vergers; she only remained of all who had been there in other days, she and the pigeons and jackdaws. i spoke to her. all arras, she said, was ruined. the great cathedral was ruined, her own family were ruined utterly, and she pointed to where the sad houses gazed from forlorn dead windows. absolute ruin, she said; but there must be no armistice. no armistice. no. it was necessary that there should be no armistice at all. no armistice with germans.
she passed on, resolute and sad, and the guns boomed on beyond arras.
a french interpreter, with the sphinxes' heads on his collar, showed me a picture postcard with a photograph of the chancel as it was five years ago. it was the very chancel before which i was standing. to see that photograph astonished me, and to know that the camera that took it must have stood where i was standing, only a little lower down, under the great heap. though one knew there had been an altar there, and candles and roof and carpet, and all the solemnity of a cathedral's interior, yet to see that photograph and to stand on that weedy heap, in the wind, under the jackdaws, was a contrast with which the mind fumbled.
i walked a little with the french interpreter. we came to a little shrine in the southern aisle. it had been all paved with marble, and the marble was broken into hundreds of pieces, and someone had carefully picked up all the bits, and laid them together on the altar.
and this pathetic heap that was gathered of broken bits had drawn many to stop and gaze at it; and idly, as soldiers will, they had written their names on them: every bit had a name on it, with but a touch of irony the frenchman said, "all that is necessary to bring your name to posterity is to write it on one of these stones.", "no," i said, "i will do it by describing all this." and we both laughed.
i have not done it yet: there is more to say of arras. as i begin the tale of ruin and wrong, the man who did it totters. his gaudy power begins to stream away like the leaves of autumn. soon his throne will be bare, and i shall have but begun to say what i have to say of calamity in cathedral and little gardens of arras.
the winter of the hohenzollerns will come; sceptre, uniforms, stars and courtiers all gone; still the world will not know half of the bitter wrongs of arras. and spring will bring a new time and cover the trenches with green, and the pigeons will preen themselves on the shattered towers, and the lime-trees along the steps will grow taller and brighter, and happier men will sing in the streets untroubled by any war lord; by then, perhaps, i may have told, to such as care to read, what such a war did in an ancient town, already romantic when romance was young, when war came suddenly without mercy, without pity, out of the north and east, on little houses, carved galleries, and gardens; churches, cathedrals and the jackdaws' nests.
