4

But to-day she is at the end of her resources. She has exhausted not
her courage but her strength. She has paid with all that she possesses
for the immense service which she has rendered to mankind. Thousands
and thousands of her children are dead; all her riches have perished;
almost all her historic memories, which were her pride and her
delight, almost all her artistic treasures, which were numbered among
the fairest in this world, are destroyed for ever. She is nothing more
than a desert whence stand out, more or less intact, four great towns
alone, four towns which the Rhenish hordes, for whom the epithet of
barbarians is in point of fact too honourable, appear to have spared
only so that they may keep back one last and monstrous revenge for the
day of the inevitable rout. It is certain that Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges
and Brussels are doomed beyond recall. In particular, the admirable
Grand'Place, the Hôtel de Ville and the Cathedral at Brussels are, I
know, undermined: I repeat, I know it from private and trustworthy
testimony against which no denial can prevail. A spark will be enough
to turn one of the recognized marvels of Europe into a heap of ruins
like those of Ypres, Malines and Louvain. Soon after--for, short of
immediate intervention, the disaster is as certain as though it were
already accomplished--Bruges, Antwerp and Ghent will suffer the same
fate; and in a moment, as I was saying the other day, there will
vanish from sight one of the corners of this earth in which the
greatest store of memories, of historic matter and artistic beauties
had been accumulated.