little figure of Jeanne d'Arc before the great portal. As seen from
afar, now in the full nearer view, the amazing thing was the majesty
of the windowless, roofless, defaced cathedral. Acres of other buildings
have crumbled utterly, but not even the German guns have succeeded in
smashing the dignity out of this ancient altar of French royalty. It
still stands firm and mighty, dominating its ruined city, as if too old,
too deeply rooted in the soil of France to be crushed by her enemies.
After a year of bombardment it still raised its mutilated face in dumb
protest above the crumbling dwellings of its people, whom it could no
longer protect from the barbarian.

Not that the Germans have spared the cathedral in their senseless
bombardment of Rheims! From that first day, when their own wounded
lay within its walls and were carried out of the burning building
by the French, until the morning I was there, when a shell tore at
the ground beneath the buttresses hitherto untouched, the Germans
seem to have taken a special malignant delight in shelling the
cathedral. They have already damaged it beyond the possibility of
complete repair, even should their hearts at this late day be
miraculously touched by shame for what they have done and their guns
should cease from further desecration. The glorious glass has already
been broken into a million fragments; many of the finely executed
mouldings and figures--irreplaceable specimens of a forgotten art--have
been crushed; great wall spaces pounded and marred. It is as if a huge,
fat German hand had ground itself across a delicately moulded face,
smearing and smudging with vindictive energy its glorious beauty.
Rheims Cathedral must bear these brutal German scars forever, even
should the vandal hand be stayed now. It can never again be what it
was--the full, marvelous flowering of Gothic art, precious heritage
from dim centuries long past. Like a woman at the full flower of her