[Illustration: A LETTER FROM THE GERMAN TRENCHES
“We have gained a good bit; our cemeteries now extend as far as the
sea.”]
“It was I who opened fire on Rheims”
Extremes so meet that the perversions of the Pacifist make but the
reverse of the Prussian shield. As to the Pacifist all war is crime, so
to the Prussian all crime is legitimate war. In the sublime resistance
of the soldier who defends his country, its women and its children,
even to the spilling of his soul, the Pacifist will see nothing but
the crime of murder; and to the Prussian the act of war is mainly
the perpetration of crime unhindered, from common lying to murder
most foul, and beyond that. These crimes the Pacifist palliates and
condones, with his Fellowships of Reconciliation and his schools for
the Conscientious Liar; while the Prussian celebrates them as victories.
The wilful destruction of works of art as an act of war is a crime
unknown among civilised peoples; and if there be degrees in that
crime the destruction of such a work as Rheims Cathedral--the
pious labour of a colony of artists directed to one end for seven
generations--is surely the most monstrous. At Rheims, at Louvain,
at Ypres, at a dozen places this spite of the grinning _crétin_ has
been manifested; and perhaps after all we were never justified in our
amazement. Dull savages do such things in mere incomprehension; and
mere incomprehension before a work of art is Prussian nature. The
best Prussian use of such a work is to build upon it some irrelevant
statistic, some ludicrous _polemik_, some laborious medley of
meaningless side-issue.
Let one thing be borne in mind, however, against the settlement to be
made at the end of this war. It is against the policy of civilised
peoples to trust savages with the possession either of works of art or
weapons of precision.