The Road to Yesterday.
“As I learned later, the —— regiment of reserves, which came into Saint-Dié further north, had experiences entirely similar to our own. The four civilians whom they had placed on chairs in the middle of the street were killed by French bullets. I saw them myself stretched out in the street near the hospital.”
“Aug. 8, 1914. Gouvy (Belgium).—There, the Belgians having fired on some German soldiers, we started at once pillaging the merchandise warehouse. Several cases—eggs, shirts, and everything that could be eaten was carried off. The safe was forced and the gold distributed among the men. As to the securities, they were torn up.”
“The enemy occupied the village of Bièvre and the edge of the wood behind it. The third company advanced in first line. We carried the village, and then pillaged and burned almost all the houses.”
“The first village we burned was Parux (Meurthe-et-Moselle). After this the dance began, throughout the villages, one after the other; over the fields and pastures we went on our bicycles up to the ditches at the edge of the road, and there sat down to eat our cherries.”
“Our first fight was at Haybes (Belgium) on the 24th of August. The second battalion entered the village, ransacked the houses, pillaged them, and burned those from which shots had been fired.”
“They do not behave as soldiers, but rather as highwaymen, bandits and brigands, and are a dishonor to our regiment and to our army.”
“No discipline, . . . the Pioneers are well nigh worthless; as to the artillery, it is a band of robbers.”
“Aug. 12, 1914, in Belgium.—One can get an idea of the fury of our soldiers in seeing the destroyed villages. Not one house left untouched. Everything eatable is requisitioned by the unofficered soldiers. Several heaps of men and women put to execution. Young pigs are running about looking for their mothers.”
“On the 22d, in the evening, I learned that in the woods, about one hundred and fifty meters north of the square formed by the intersection of the great Calonne trench with the road from Vaux-les-Palameis to Saint-Rémy, there were corpses of French soldiers shot by the Germans. I went to the spot and found the bodies of about thirty soldiers within a small space, most of them prone, but several still kneeling, and all having a precisely similar wound—a bullet through the ear. One only, seriously wounded in his lower parts, could still speak, and told me that the Germans before leaving had ordered them to lie down and that they had them shot through the head; that he, already wounded, had secured indulgence by stating that he was the father of three small children. The skulls of these unfortunates were scattered; the guns, broken at the stock, were scattered here and there; and the blood had besprinkled the bushes to such an extent that in coming out of the woods my cape was spattered with it; it was a veritable shambles.”
“Dogs chained, without food or drink. And the houses about them on fire. But the just anger of our soldiers is accompanied also by pure vandalism. In the villages, already emptied of their inhabitants, the houses are set on fire. I feel sorry for this population. If they have made use of disloyal weapons, after all, they are only defending their own country. The atrocities which these non-combatants are still committing are revenged after a savage fashion. Mutilations of the wounded are the order of the day.”
This order was addressed by General Stenger, in command of the fifty-eighth German brigade, on the 26th of August, to the troops under his orders:
“From this day forward no further prisoners will be taken. All prisoners will be massacred. The wounded, whether in arms or not in arms, shall be massacred. Even the prisoners already gathered in convoys will be massacred. No living enemy must remain behind us.”
Having been instructed to investigate atrocities said to have been committed by the Germans in portions of French territory which had been occupied by them, a commission composed of four representatives of the French Government repaired to these districts in order to make a thorough investigation. The commission was composed of M. Georges Payelle, First President of the Cour des Comptes; Armand Mollard, Minister Plenipotentiary; Georges Maringer, Counselor of State, and Edmond Paillot, Counselor of the Cour de Cassation.
They started on their mission late in September, 1914, and visited the Departments of Seine-et-Marne, Marne, Meuse, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Oise, and Aisne. According to the report, they made note only of those accusations against the invaders which were backed up by reliable testimony and discarded everything that might have been occasioned by the exigencies of war.
The statement, which extends over many pages and contains over 25,000 words, is a record of the most fiendish crimes imaginable. “On every side our eyes rested on ruin. Whole villages have been destroyed by bombardment or fire; towns formerly full of life are now nothing but deserts full of ruins; and, in visiting the scenes of desolation where the invader’s torch has done its work, one feels continually as though one were walking among the remains of one of those cities of antiquity which have been annihilated by the great cataclysms of nature.
“In truth it can be stated that never has a war carried on between civilized nations assumed the savage and ferocious character of the one which at this moment is being waged on our soil by an implacable adversary. Pillage, rape, arson, and murder are the common practice of our enemies; and the facts which have been revealed to us day by day at once constitute definite crimes against common rights, punished by the codes of every country with the most severe and the most dishonoring penalties, and which prove an astonishing degeneration in German habits of thought since 1870.
“Crimes against women and young girls have been of appalling frequency. We have proved a great number of them, but they only represent an infinitesimal proportion of those which we could have taken up. Owing to a sense of decency, which is deserving of every respect, the victims of these hateful acts usually refuse to disclose them. Doubtless fewer would have been committed if the leaders of an army whose discipline is most rigorous had taken any trouble to prevent them; yet, strictly speaking, they can only be considered as the individual and spontaneous acts of uncaged beasts. But with regard to arson, theft, and murder the case is very different; the officers, even those of the highest station, will bear before humanity the overwhelming responsibility for these crimes.
“In the greater part of the places where we carried on our inquiry we came to the conclusion that the German Army constantly professes the most complete contempt for human life, that its soldiers, and even its officers, do not hesitate to finish off the wounded, that they kill without pity the inoffensive inhabitants of the territories which they have invaded, and they do not spare in their murderous rage women, old men, or children. The wholesale shootings at Lunéville, Gerbéviller, Nomeny, and Senlis are terrible examples of this; and in the course of this report you will read the story of scenes of carnage in which officers themselves have not been ashamed to take part.”
Of the criminal attempts on women cited in the report two of the most horrible occurred in the Department of Seine-et-Marne.
“Frightful scenes occurred at the Château de —— in the neighborhood of La Ferté-Gaucher. There lived there an old gentleman, M. X., with his servant, Mlle. Y., 54 years old. On Sept. 5 several Germans, among whom was a non-commissioned officer, were in occupation of this property. After they had been supplied with food, the non-commissioned officer proposed to a refugee, a Mme. Z., that she should sleep with him; she refused. M. X., to save her from the designs of which she was the object, sent her to his farm, which was in the neighborhood. The German ran there to fetch her, dragged her back to the château and led her to the attic; then, having completely undressed her, he tried to violate her. At this moment M. X., wishing to protect her, fired revolver shots on the staircase and was immediately shot.
The Bombardment of the East Coast of England.
This scene, painted in Hartlepool, shows the effect of a bursting German shell in the unfortified British town. Several women and many other civilians were killed by the German raiders.
Prussian Soldier Kidnapping a Red Cross Nurse.
In spite of her prayer he seized her roughly, tied her hands together and throwing her across his saddle rode away. Fortunately, a Cossack appeared, pierced the scoundrel with his lance and rescued the woman. (Graphic copr.)
“The non-commissioned officer then made Mme. X. come out of the attic, obliged her to step over the corpse of the old man, and led her to a closet, where he again made two unsuccessful attempts upon her. Leaving her at last, he threw himself upon Mlle. Y., having first handed Mme. Z. over to two soldiers, who, after having violated her, one once and the other twice, in the dead man’s room, made her pass the night in a barn near them, where one of them twice again had sexual connection with her.
“As for Mlle. Y., she was obliged by threats of being shot, to strip herself completely naked and lie on a mattress with the non-commissioned officer, who kept her there until morning.
“At Least They Only Drown Your Women.”
“It is generally believed at Coulommiers that criminal attempts have been made on many women of that town, but only one crime of this nature has been proved for certain. A charwoman, Mme. X., was the victim. A soldier came to her house on the 6th of September, toward 9.30 in the evening, and sent away her husband to go and search for one of his comrades in the street. Then, in spite of the fact that two small children were present, he tried to rape the young woman. X., when he heard his wife’s cries, rushed back, but was driven off with blows of the butt of the man’s rifle into a neighboring room, of which the door was left open, and his wife was forced to suffer the consummation of the outrage. The rape took place almost under the eyes of the husband, who, being terrorized, did not dare to intervene, and used his efforts only to calm the terror of his children.
“Personal liberty, like human life, is the object of complete scorn on the part of the German military authorities. Almost everywhere citizens of every age have been dragged from their homes and led into captivity, many have died or been killed on the way.
“Arson, still more than murder, forms the usual procedure of our adversaries. It is employed by them either as a means of systematic devastation or as a means of terrorism. The German Army, in order to provide for it, possesses a complete outfit, which comprises torches, grenades, rockets, petrol pumps, fuse sticks, and little bags of pastilles made of compressed powder which are very inflammable. The lust for arson is manifested chiefly against churches and against monuments which have some special interest, either artistic or historical.
“Thousands of houses in the ground covered by the investigators had been completely destroyed by fire. In the Department of Marne a great many villages, as well as important country towns, were burned without any reason whatever. Without doubt these crimes were committed by order, as German detachments arrived in the neighborhood with their torches, their grenades, and their usual outfit for arson.
“At Lépine, a laborer named Caqué, in whose house two German cyclists were billeted, asked the latter if the grenades which he saw in their possession were destined for his house. They answered: ‘No. Lépine is finished with.’ At that moment nine houses in the village were burned out.
“At Marfaux nineteen private houses were burned.
“Of the commune of Glannes practically nothing remains. At Somme-Tourbe the entire village has been destroyed, with the exception of the mayoralty house, the church, and two private buildings.
“At Auve nearly the whole town has been destroyed. At Etrepy sixty-three families out of seventy are homeless. At Huiron all the houses, with the exception of five, have been burned. At Sermaize-les-Bains only about forty houses out of nine hundred remain. At Bignicourt-sur-Saultz thirty houses out of thirty-three are in ruins.
“At Suippes, the big market town which has been practically burned out, German soldiers carrying straw and cans of petrol have been seen in the streets. While the mayor’s house was burning, six sentinels with fixed bayonets were under orders to forbid any one to approach and to prevent any help being given.
“All this destruction by arson, which only represents a small proportion of the acts of the same kind in the Department of Seine-et-Marne, was accomplished without the least tendency to rebellion or the smallest act of resistance being recorded against the inhabitants of the localities which are today more or less completely destroyed. In some villages the Germans, before setting fire to them, made one of their soldiers fire a shot from his rifle so as to be able to pretend afterward that the civilian population had attacked them, an allegation which is all the more absurd since at the time when the enemy arrived the only inhabitants left were old men, sick persons, or people absolutely without any means of aggression.
“On the 6th of September at Champguyon, Mme. Louvet was present at the martyrdom of her husband. She saw him in the hands of ten or fifteen soldiers, who were beating him to death before his own house, and ran up and kissed him through the bars of the gate. She was brutally pushed back and fell, while the murderers dragged along the unhappy man covered with blood, begging them to spare his life and protesting that he had done nothing to be treated thus. He was finished off at the end of the village. When his wife found his body it was horribly disfigured. His head was beaten in, one of his eyes hung from the socket, and one of his wrists was broken.
“At Montmirail a scene of real savagery was enacted. On the 5th of September a non-commissioned officer flung himself almost naked on the widow Naudé, on whom he was billeted, and carried her into his room. This woman’s father, François Fontaine, rushed up on hearing his daughter’s cry. At once fifteen or twenty Germans broke through the door of the house, pushed the old man into the street, and shot him without mercy. Little Juliette Naudé opened the window at this moment and was struck in the stomach by a bullet, which went through her body. The poor child died after twenty-four hours of most dreadful suffering.
“We have constantly found definite evidence of theft,” states the report further, “and we do not hesitate to state that where a body of the enemy has passed it has given itself up to a systematically organized pillage, in the presence of its leaders, who have even themselves often taken part in it. Cellars have been emptied to the last bottle, safes have been gutted, considerable sums of money have been stolen or extorted; a great quantity of plate and jewelry, as well as pictures, furniture, ‘objets d’art,’ linen, bicycles, women’s dresses, sewing machines, even down to children’s toys, after having been taken away, have been loaded on vehicles to be taken toward the frontier.”
Space forbids further quotation from the harrowing document, in which one frightful tale succeeds another, until with a wave of sickening horror the reader cries out, “Can such things really be?”
“A chain of baseless fabrications” is the phrase used by Germany to characterize the charges brought against the German armies by the French government, claiming that “German army officers have, by every means and with full success, effected the maintenance of discipline and the strict observance of all the rules of war in each and all the spheres of operation.”
The demolished villages and pitiful victims must tell their own tale of terror. Doubtless many of the crimes committed have been without the sanction of the German government or even without the authority of a superior officer, but, even allowing for the partisanship that is natural on the part of afflicted inhabitants, the testimony of the French commission together with that of former Ambassador Bryce must deeply affect the attitude of all thinking people toward warfare.
THE INEXPIABLE GERMAN CRIME, LOUVAIN — ART TREASURES OF HISTORIC CITY — REDUCED TO A HEAP OF ASHES — PITILESS DESTRUCTION AS TOLD BY TOWN TREASURER — A MODERN POMPEII — BURNING OF CITY SYSTEMATIC — INDIGNANT PROTEST AGAINST MODERN HUNS.
All through Belgium and all through the country of the Franco-German border line are towns and cities filled with treasures of art and history—some of the richest, indeed, that centuries of civilization have amassed. Under the guns of both sides of the mighty conflict these paintings and shrines and storied buildings have been exposed to destruction, and many of them have been wantonly sacrificed, shattered beyond hope of restoration.
Under the latest Hague proposals, Article XXVIII, historic monuments are supposed to be respected even by warring nations, yet both Germany and France have accused each other of violating this convention. The whole of civilized humanity rises in protest against such sacrilege.
Among all the black crimes of the German invasion of Belgium none is blacker than the sack and burning of Louvain, the fairest city of Belgium and the intellectual metropolis of the Low Countries. According to a bitter statement of Frank Jewett Mather, the well-known American art critic, “Louvain contained more beautiful works of art than the Prussian nation has produced in its entire history.”
There was hardly a building within the ramparts but breathed the air of some romance of the Middle Ages or marked a stepping-stone in its stirring history. Once before war robbed it of its commercial prestige, only to permit it to rise, phœnix-like, as the center of learning during the sixteenth century. At the opening of the present war it still boasted of the largest university in Belgium, in which thousands of antique volumes and prints were stored. Its museums and its churches housed scores of paintings of the old Flemish masters.
Louvain has passed through successive periods of culture and barbarity ever since Julius Caesar established a permanent camp there during his campaigns against the Belgians and the Germans. In the eleventh century it became the residence of the long line of Dukes of Brabant, and was the capital until Brussels wrested this distinction from it during an uprising of weavers against their feudal masters. In the fourteenth century it had gained a population of between 100,000 and 150,000, and there were no fewer than 2,400 woolen manufactories. The weavers were a turbulent lot, however, and when they rose against the Duke Wencelaus he conquered them and forced thousands of them to flee to Holland and England. It was then that Brussels became the capital and Louvain lost its prestige as a center of the cloth-making industry.
The Voice of the Cologne Church Speaks:
“Louvain, thou wast built on my foundations, spirit of my spirit, heart of my heart.”
Scholars began to pour into the town, however, to glean what learning they could from the old parchments and books which its castles contained. In 1423 Duke John IV of Brabant founded Louvain University. Students flocked there from all over the world. In the sixteenth century it had 4,000 students and forty-three colleges.
The library occupied a large room with fine wood panels, carved in intricate designs. It held 150,000 volumes and thousands of manuscripts, valuable beyond price. It contained a colossal group representing a scene from the Flood, sculptured by Geerts in 1839.
One block to the north of the university is the Grande Place, on which faced the Hôtel de Ville, one of the finest examples of the late Gothic style of architecture in Europe. It surpassed the town halls of Bruges, Brussels, and Ghent in elegance of detail and harmony of design. It was erected in 1448 by Mathieu de Layens, and it was from the upper windows of this building that thirteen magistrates of noble birth were hurled to their death on the spears of the populace in the streets below during the weavers’ uprising.
Across the Grande Place stood the church of St. Pierre, a magnificent type of the Gothic style built on a cruciform plan and flanked by chapels holding reliquaries of the saints, life-sized wooden figures, and priceless carvings and paintings. There might have been seen the works of Van Papenhoven, Roger van der Weyden, Dierick Bouts, and De Layens.
The notification of the sacking of Louvain was contained in the notice issued by the British Press Bureau on Friday, August 28, 1914, which read as follows: “On Tuesday evening a German corps, after receiving a check, withdrew in disorder into the town of Louvain. A German guard at the entrance to the town mistook the nature of this incursion and fired on their routed fellow-countrymen, mistaking them for Belgians. In spite of all denials from the authorities the Germans, in order to cover their mistake, pretended that it was the inhabitants who had fired on them, whereas the inhabitants, including the police, had been disarmed more than a week before. Without inquiry and without listening to any protests the German commander-in-chief announced that the town would be immediately destroyed. The inhabitants were ordered to leave their dwellings; a party of the men were made prisoners and the women and children put into trains, the destination of which is unknown. Soldiers furnished with bombs set fire to all parts of the town. The splendid church of St. Pierre, the University buildings, the library, and the scientific establishment were delivered to the flames. Several notable citizens were shot. A town of 45,000 inhabitants, the intellectual metropolis of the Low Countries since the fifteenth century, is now no more than a heap of ashes.”
The town treasurer of Louvain, who managed to escape from the sacked city, gave in the London Times the following account of the destruction:
“At last, on Tuesday night, there took place the unspeakable crime, the shame of which can be understood only by those who followed and watched the different phases of the German occupation of Louvain.
“It is a significant fact that the German wounded and sick, including their Red Cross nurses, were all removed from the hospitals. The Germans meanwhile proceeded methodically to make a last and supreme requisition, although they knew the town could not satisfy it. Toward six o’clock the bugle sounded, and officers lodging in private houses left at once with arms and luggage. At the same time thousands of additional soldiers, with numerous field pieces and cannon, marched into the town to their allotted positions. The gas factory, which had been idle, had been worked through the previous night and day by Germans, so that during this premeditated outrage the people could not take advantage of darkness to escape from the town. A further fact that proves their premeditation is that the attack took place at eight o’clock, the exact time at which the population entered their homes in conformity with the German orders—consequently escape became well-nigh impossible. At 8.20 the full fusillade with the roar of the cannons came from all sides of the town at once.
“The cavalry charged through the streets sabring fugitives, while the infantry, posted on the foot-paths, had their fingers on the triggers of their guns waiting for the unfortunate people to rush from the houses or appear at the windows, the soldiers praising and complimenting each other on their marksmanship as they fired at the unhappy fugitives. Those whose houses were not yet destroyed were ordered to quit and follow the soldiers to the railway station. There the men were separated from mothers, wives, and children, and thrown, some bound, into trains leaving in the direction of Germany. They saw their carefully-collected art and other treasures being shared out by the soldiers, the officers looking on. Those who attempted to appeal to their tormentors’ better feelings were immediately shot. A few were let loose, but most of them were sent to Germany.
“On Wednesday at daybreak the remaining women and children were driven out of the town—a lamentable spectacle—with uplifted arms and under the menace of bayonets and revolvers. The day was practically calm. The destruction of the most beautiful part of the town seemed momentarily to have soothed the barbarian rage of the invaders. On Thursday the remnant of the Civil Guard was called up on the pretext of extinguishing the conflagration; those who demurred were chained and sent with some wounded Germans to the Fatherland, whilst the population had to quit.”
Fair Louvain is now a place of desolation and ashes. Its treasures have been madly sacrificed to the god of war. A graphic description of the ruin has been written by Professor E. Gilson, of the University of Louvain, in the form of a letter to the Belgian Minister of Justice. It says in part:
“At the ‘Seven Corners’ Louvain reveals itself to my eyes like a luminous panorama in the glade of a forest. The center of the city is a smoking heap of ruins. Houses are caved in, nothing remains but smoking ruins, and a mass of brick. It is a veritable Pompeii. But how much more tragic and vivid is the sight of this new Pompeii! An oppressive silence everywhere. Everybody has fled; at the windows of cellars I see frightened faces, and at the street corners Prussian sentinels, sordid, immovable and silent.
“In the center stand the walls of St. Pierre, now a grinning silhouette, roof and belfry gone, the walls blackened and caved in. In front stands the Hôtel de Ville, dominating everything and almost intact. Further on, the remains of Les Hales, entirely destroyed, except for the arcade of big pillars of the Salle des Pas Perdus. The library and its treasures are entirely gone.
“In the Petite Rue Louis Nelsens everything is destroyed. At the foot of the statue, in a flower bed all tramped underfoot, there is an irregular hillock covered with a few dead leaves. An old woman, recognizing me, comes out of her cellar and tells me: ‘Monsieur, this is the grave of Monsieur David and his son, the best people that ever lived.’ She cries. They were killed by shrapnel fired upon them as they were leaving their house. The Capuchin brothers made temporary graves for the dead.
“Graves were found nearly everywhere. In front of the statue, near a house, I find traces of fire. ‘In this place,’ the old woman tells me, ‘the Prussians burned a body after soaking it in petroleum. Some men buried the charred remains.’ I pick up a key which must have belonged to the dead man—a memento of this monstrous incident.
“In the center of the city the sight is extraordinarily picturesque—gloomy, abominable, and more so in the evening when the full moon is shining over the mass of ruins, it is really fantastic, diabolical.
“The center of old Louvain, the old city of the Dukes of Brabant, exists no longer; a new city will have to be built in the center of the quarters spared by the torch.
“A villager told me that the soldiers had two ways of setting fire to the houses: One was to break the windows of the first floor, to throw petroleum on the floor, and throw in torches of burning straw, while others were engaged in shooting at the upper-story windows to prevent the inhabitants from throwing missiles on those setting fire to their homes.”
Indignant protest against the outrageous sacrifice of Louvain arose from every quarter of the civilized world. The London Tablet, commenting on the desolation of Belgium and the sacrifice of her temples, said:
“The irreparable crime of Louvain and the ruthless damage done to the Cathedral of Malines while Cardinal Mercier was absent in Rome have left Belgium’s cup of bitterness still unfilled. We do not understand the reason of these remorseless attacks upon venerable places of worship, and particularly upon Roman Catholic churches. We do not fully discern why even the modern Huns should be so eager to violate these peaceful sanctuaries, destroying one, bombarding another with zest, stabling their horses in a third, as they have undoubtedly done. One would almost fancy that the late Professor Cramb was right after all, that Germany regards the Christian creed as outworn, and that she dreams, when she has imposed her will upon the world (if she can), of founding a new religion, with the Kaiser as its inspired expositor. We wonder what the pious people of Bavaria and Austria-Hungary think of this persistent desecration of Catholic shrines. The meaning of the sack of Dinant is, however, sufficiently clear. Thousands of travelers know that pleasant little town, which clustered beneath the old citadel on the banks of the Meuse. They will learn with horror and distress that it has shared the fate of Louvain, that it has been shelled and burned, that many of its defenseless men have been shot, and that its women are hunted and homeless. We have not yet been told, but doubtless shall hear in due course, that the splendid thirteenth-century church of Notre Dame, the most complete example of pointed Gothic architecture in Belgium, has perished amid the general destruction. The reason of this sack and pillage of town after town in Belgium, with every accompaniment of murderous barbarity—Termonde is another melancholy case in point—is becoming obvious. It is due to the resolute resistance of Antwerp. The Germans want to capture Antwerp, but can not spare enough men to invest the fortress, and in any case hope to obtain it without paying the price. They seek to terrorize Antwerp into submission by laying Belgium waste, by razing her undefended cities to the ground, and by shedding the blood of innocent Belgian citizens of both sexes. . . . The wilful devastation of Belgium will have only one definite result. It will increase the chorus of indignant denunciation of German methods of warfare which now rises from every civilized country in the world.”
Burning of the Cathedral of Rheims.
This noble building, one of the finest pieces of Gothic architecture in the world, was bombarded by German shells and set on fire. Much of the priceless statuary and the entire roof were destroyed.
The Sacking of Louvain.
According to the official report of the Commission of Inquiry into the German atrocities at Louvain and other places, men were brutally separated from their wives and children, and after having been subjected to abominable treatment by the Germans were herded out of the town. The corpses of many a civilian encumbered the streets and squares.
DESECRATION OF THE SHRINES OF HUMANITY — THE “ROYAL CITY”—CATHEDRAL OF NOTRE DAME — ART TREASURES — CATHEDRAL A TARGET — ANGER OF CROWD STILLED BY PRIESTS — “SUPREME SACRIFICE AGAINST THE SPIRIT OF MAN”—BEAUTY IRREPARABLY GONE.
If the destruction of famous buildings, shrines of humanity as well as of art and religion, were but put down to the unavoidable accidents of war, after the first poignant sense of the irreparable loss, one would rather sorrowfully accept the smoking ruins as further evidence of the horrible, if unavoidable, waste of war. But to have Louvain’s atrocities justified, to have the destruction of towns systematically brought about in a spirit of fiendish reprisal or as part of a propaganda of military terrorism, this is what revolts the world. It is this demoniacal barbarism, raised to the ultimate power for evil by modern mechanism, that staggers civilization.
The sacking of Louvain had hardly ceased to be a matter of world-wide outcry against such inexcusable barbarity when there came the official report that the Cathedral of Rheims, one of the most glorious examples of Gothic art in the world and an historic monument of first rank, had fallen before the German guns in the bombardment of that historic city.
Rheims has been a city of importance since the time of the Romans. The cathedral, wherein for nearly 1,000 years the kings of France were crowned, has been fittingly described as “the most perfect example in grandeur and grace of Gothic style in existence.”
Hincmar, a mighty archbishop of the ninth century, once declared that Rheims was “by the appointment of Heaven a royal city.”
The words are at once historical and prophetic. Here Clovis was baptized by St. Remigius, and here in the cathedral in 1429, Charles VII of France was crowned through the efforts of Joan of Arc.
According to the historians of art, Rheims is royal in another sense. In no city in Europe have the life and thought of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance found such perfect expression in architecture. From early Gothic to Romanesque, and from Romanesque to Renaissance, the buildings of Rheims reveal better than any records the city’s historical development. Of all the buildings illustrative of their various periods there were said to be no better examples than the cathedral and the church of St. Jacques, fine monuments of early Gothic; the later Gothic edifice of the archbishop’s palace, and, finally, the city hall, a handsome work of the best period of French Renaissance.
No one really knows who designed and built the cathedral. The first stones were laid in 1211, and the building, with the exception of the superb west façade, was completed in the thirteenth century. The façade, which dates from the fourteenth century, was adorned with three exquisite recessed portals containing, in a more or less good state of preservation, over five hundred statues. Of the entire structure, we read in “Cathedrals of the Isle de France”: “Nothing can exceed the majesty of its deeply recessed portals, the beauty of the rose window that surmounts them, or the elegance of the gallery that completes the façade.”
The Christian World!
The interior, which was cruciform, was 455 feet long and 99 feet wide; the distance from the middle isle to the highest point in the roof was 125 feet. Here in niches in the walls was another multitude of statues, and in the nave and transepts were preserved valuable tapestry, representing biblical scenes and scenes from the history of medieval France. Here also hung a treasure of paintings, including canvases by Tintoretto, Nicolas Poussin, and others, and some fine old tapestries.
In the treasury were reliquaries, one said to contain a thorn from the Holy Crown, the skull of St. Remi and a collection of valuable vessels in gold, the most remarkable in France. The treasures included not only the coronation ornaments of various kings, but the vase of St. Ursula, the massive chalice of St. Remigius, and countless crucifixes in gold, silver and precious woods.
In the treasury was also preserved the Sainte Ampoule—the vessel in which the oil used to anoint the kings of France was preserved—a successor to the famous ampulla, which a dove was said to have brought from heaven filled with inexhaustible holy oil at the time of the baptism of Clovis, in 496. During the Revolution the sacred vessel was shattered, but a fragment was piously preserved, in which some of the oil was said still to remain.
The Cathedral of Notre Dame is now no more than an empty shell of charred and blackened walls. The fire started between four and five o’clock Sunday afternoon, September 20, 1914, after shells had been crashing into the town all day. Over five hundred fell between early morning and sunset.
The cathedral had been turned into a hospital for the German wounded, to secure for the building the protection of the Red Cross flag. When the first shell struck the roof everyone believed it was a stray shot, but later in the day a German battery four miles away, began making the great Gothic pile its target. Shell after shell crashed its way into the old masonry and stonework that had stood the storms of centuries.
At 4.30 some scaffolding around the east end of the cathedral, where repairs were going on, caught fire and soon the whole network of poles and planks was ablaze. Then the roof of old oak timbers caught fire and soon the ceilings of the nave and transepts were a roaring furnace.
The blazing piers of carved woodwork crashed to the floor, where piles of straw had been gathered in connection with the work of the field hospital. As soon as this caught fire the paneling of the altars, the chairs and other furniture were devoured.
Twenty wounded Germans would have perished by the efforts of their own countrymen if several French army doctors, with their bearers, had not carried them one by one at their own risk out of the church by one of the side doors.
There a grim scene was only prevented by the courage of the priests of the cathedral. A crowd of about two hundred citizens had come out to watch the terrible spectacle. As these Germans, in their uniforms, appeared at the transept door howls of uncontrollable passion went up from the crowd. “Kill them!” they shouted. Soldiers in the crowd leveled their rifles, when Abbé Andrieux sprang forward between the wounded men and the muzzles that threatened them.
“Don’t fire,” he shouted, “you would make yourselves as guilty as they.”
The reproach was enough, and amid fierce hooting and angry cries the Germans were carried to shelter in the museum near by.
From the hills the flaming cathedral was an even more impressive sight than in the streets of the town. From the yawning roof the red glare poured up into the dark sky and its windows flickered with dancing flames. So night closed down. Not for long was its stillness undisturbed. At two o’clock German batteries opened fire again. Then from windows that looked toward Rheims across the plain one could watch the lurid sight of night bombardment.
At last daybreak came, a sad gray dawn, with cold, dispiriting rain falling. When the shadows had lifted and enough light had filtered through the low, lead-colored clouds for one to see across the plain, the ravished city, with its ruined cathedral standing stark against the background and a vast wall of smoke rising slowly from the still flaming ruins, was as desolate a thing as the sun could well have found in its journey round the world that morning.
“Will not every artist, every writer, every lover of the beautiful, unite with us in a protestation of horror against the infamous destruction of Rheims Cathedral?” wrote Emile Hovelaque, French Inspector General of Public Instruction, in a letter to the London Times. “It was the cradle of our kings, the high altar of our race, a sanctuary and shrine dear from every memory, sacred in every thought, loved as our remotest past, an ever-speaking witness to the permanence through change of the ideals, aspirations and dreams of our country.
“Can such deeds go unavenged? Will not the conscience of the whole world rise against those nameless barbarians who shelled Red Cross flags floating over that twice-sacred pile, who have committed this supreme sacrifice against the spirit of man in seven hundred years? Those gray cliffs of chiseled stone had risen above the furious tides of innumerable invasions unhurt, spared by the most savage onsets. Battered, by every storm of heaven and earth, the noblest sculpture of the West remained until German culture came.
“And then, deliberately, methodically, slowly, the princes and captains of an accursed race mangled the sacred pile until all had fallen. Fairest and most human images in all the world, a forest of gigantic columns, a vast vaulted canopy of stone, majestic walls and heaven-stained glass—it was murder in cold blood, the murder not of a life but of immortality. Forty-eight long hours the inexplicable crime dragged out. Louvain first, now Rheims. What next?”
The artistic beauty of the cathedral of Rheims can never be restored, in the opinion of Whitney Warren, the New York architect, who made a thorough inspection of the structure.
Mr. Warren, who is a corresponding member of the Institut de France, was given the privilege of visiting the cathedral. His investigation had no official character, but the result of his observations was communicated to Myron T. Herrick, American Ambassador to Belgium.
“That anything remains of the edifice,” said Mr. Warren, “is due to the strong construction of the walls and vaults which are of a robustness that can resist even modern implements of war.”
The building was not battered by the heavier guns, as had been feared, but it suffered most from shrapnel fire. The famous rose windows, the sculpture and other details of the façade that were ruined are, however, just the examples of art that can not be replaced.
Statues, gargoyles, and other ornaments on the exterior of the cathedral have been tumbled to the pavement and shattered, though at first glance the outer walls of the cathedral do not show the ruin that has taken place. These blackened walls yet stand as a monument to the glory of France, but still more as a grim reminder of the barbarity of German warfare.
THE CRUCIAL TEST OF CANADA’S MEN — WONDERFUL STORY OF HEROISM AS TOLD BY SIR MAX AITKEN — A REMARKABLE PERFORMANCE — QUIET PRECEDING STORM — SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES — LINE NEVER WAVERED — OFFICER FELL AT HEAD OF TROOPS — FORTUNES OF THIRD BRIGADE — IN DIRE PERIL — OVERWHELMING NUMBERS — PUT TO TEST — CAPTURE OF ST. JULIEN — A HERO LEADING HEROES.
The fight of the Canadians at Langemarck and St. Julien in April, 1915, makes such a battle story as has sufficed, in other nations, to inspire song and tradition for centuries. In the words of Sir John French, the Canadians, by holding their ground when it did not seem humanly possible to hold it, “saved the situation,” kept the enemy out of Ypres, kept closed the road to Calais, and made a failure of German plans that otherwise were about to be successful.
The Canadian soldiers have indeed shown that they are second to none. They were put to as supreme a test as it would be possible for any army to meet with, for they fought overwhelming numbers under conditions that seemed to ensure annihilation. They fought on, and failed neither in courage, discipline, nor tenacity, although thousands of them fell.
The story of their unflinching heroism was told by Sir Max Aitken, the record officer serving with the Canadian division in France:
“The recent fighting in Flanders, in which the Canadians played so glorious a part, cannot of course be described with precision of military detail until time has made possible the co-ordination of relevant facts, and the piecing together in a narrative both lucid and exact of much which, so near the event, is confused and blurred. But it is considered right that the mourning in Canada for husbands, sons or brothers who have given their lives for the Empire should have with as little reserve as military considerations allow the rare and precious consolation which, in the agony of bereavement, the record of the valor of their dead must bring, and indeed the mourning in Canada will be very widely spread, for the battle which raged for so many days in the neighborhood of Ypres was bloody, even as men appraise battles in this callous and life-engulfing war. But as long as brave deeds retain the power to fire the blood of Anglo-Saxons, the stand made by the Canadians in those desperate days will be told by fathers to their sons.
“The Canadians have wrested the trenches over the bodies of the dead and earned the right to stand side by side with the superb troops who, in the first battle of Ypres, broke and drove before them the flower of the Prussian Guards. Looked at from any point the performance would be remarkable. It is amazing to soldiers when the genesis and composition of the Canadian division are considered. It contained no doubt a sprinkling of South African veterans, but it consisted in the main of men who were admirable raw material, but who, at the outbreak of war, were neither disciplined nor trained as men count discipline and training in these days of scientific warfare. It was, it is true, commanded by a distinguished English general. Its staff was supplemented, without being replaced, by some brilliant British staff officers. But in its higher and regimental commands were to be found lawyers, college professors, business men and real estate agents, ready with cool self-confidence to do battle against an organization in which the study of military science is the exclusive pursuit of laborious lives.
“With what devotion, with a valor how desperate, with resourcefulness how cool and how frightful, the amateur soldier of Canada confronted overwhelming odds, may perhaps be made clear, even by a narrative so incomplete as the present.
“The salient of Ypres has become familiar to all students of the campaign in Flanders. Like all salients it was, and was known to be, a source of weakness to the forces holding it, but the reasons which have led to its retention are apparent, and need not be explained.
“On Thursday, April 22, 1915, the Canadian division held a line of roughly five thousand yards, extending in a northwesterly direction from the Ypres-Roulers railway, to the Ypres-Poekapelle road, and connecting at its terminus with the French troops. The division consisted of three infantry brigades in addition to the artillery brigades. Of the infantry brigades the first was in reserve, the second was on the right, and the third established contact with the allies at the point indicated above.
“The day was a peaceful one, warm and sunny, and except that the previous day had witnessed a further bombardment of the stricken town of Ypres, everything seemed quiet in front of the Canadian line. At five o’clock in the afternoon a plan carefully prepared was put into execution against our French allies on the left. Asphyxiating gas of great intensity was projected into their trenches, probably by means of force pumps and pipes laid out under the parapets. The fumes, aided by a favorable wind, floated backwards, poisoning and disabling over an extended area those who fell under their effect. The result was that the French were compelled to give ground for a considerable distance. The glory which the French army has won in this war would make it impertinent to labor on the compelling nature of the poisonous discharges under which the trenches were lost. The French did, as everyone knew they would do, all that stout soldiers could do, and the Canadian division, officers and men, look forward to many occasions in the future in which they will stand side by side with the brave armies of France.
“The immediate consequence of this enforced withdrawal was, of course, extremely grave. The third brigade of the Canadian division was without any left, or, in other words, its left was in the air. It became imperatively necessary greatly to extend the Canadian lines to the left rear. It was not, of course, practicable to move the first brigade from reserve at a moment’s notice, and the line, extended from five to nine thousand yards, was not naturally the line that had been held by the allies at five o’clock, and a gap still existed on its left.