One of the atrocities that has horrified the civilized world has
been the ruin of Rheims Cathedral. Germany, of course, was denied by
nature any gift of imagination. The German mind is a hearty, mediocre
mind, that can multiply and exploit the inventions and discoveries
of the other races. The Germans contributed practically nothing to
the invention of the locomotive, the steamboat, the Marconigram, the
automobile, the airplane, the phonograph, the sewing machine, the
reaper, the electric light. Even as to the weapons with which she
fights, Americans invented for Germany her revolver, her machine gun,
her turreted ship, and her submarine. In retrospect it seems absolutely
incredible that Germany could have been so helplessly and hopelessly
unequal to the invention of the tools that have made her rich.
But imagination is not her gift. If Sheffield can give her a model
knife, Germany can reproduce that knife in quantities and undersell
Sheffield. The German people keep step in a regiment, in a factory and
on a ship, and therefore are wholesalers. The French mind is creative.
It stands for individual excellence, and is at the other extreme from
the German temperament. The emblem of the German intellect is beer; the
emblem of the English intellect is port wine; the emblem of the French
mind is champagne; the emblem of an American intellect like Emerson's
is a beaker filled with sunshine--but Germany has a "beer" mind. It
is this lack of imagination that explains Nietzsche's statement that
for two hundred years Germany has been "the enemy of culture" while
Heinrich Heine insists that "the very name of culture is France."
It is this total lack of any appreciation of art and architecture that
explains Germany's destruction of some of the noblest buildings of
the world. She cannot by any chance conceive how the other races look
upon her vandalism. Her own foreign secretary expressed it publicly
in one of her state papers, "Let the neutrals cease chattering about
cathedrals. Germany does not care one straw if all the galleries and
churches in the world were destroyed, providing we gain our military
ends." Guizot in his history of civilization presents three tests of a
civilized people: First, they revere their pledges and honour; second,
they reverence and pursue the beautiful in painting, architecture and
literature; third, they exhibit sympathy in reform towards the poor,
the weak and the unfortunate.
Now apply those tests to the Kaiser and his War Staff, and you
understand why Rheims Cathedral is a ruin.[2] No building since the
Parthenon was more precious to the world's culture. What majesty and
dignity in the lines! What a wealth of statuary! How wonderful the
Twelfth Century glass! With what lightness did these arches leap into
the air! Now, the great bombs have torn holes through the roof; only
little bits of glass remain; broken are the arches, ruined these
flying buttresses, the altar where Jeanne d'Arc stood at the crowning
of Charles is quite gone. The great library, the bishop's palace, all
the art treasures are in ruins. But ancient and noble buildings do
not belong to a race, they belong to the world. Sacred forever the
threshold of the Parthenon, once pressed by the feet of Socrates and
Plato! Thrice sacred that aisle of Santa Croce in Florence, dear to
Dante and Savonarola. To be treasured forever the solemn beauty of
Westminster Abbey, holding the dust of men of supreme genius.
In front of the wreck of the Cathedral of Rheims, all blackened with
German fire, broken with the German hammer, is the statue of Jeanne
d'Arc. There she stands, immortal forever, guiding the steed of the sun
with the left hand, lifting the banners of peace and liberty with the
right. By some strange chance, no bomb injured that bronze. That figure
seems a beautiful prophecy of a day when the spirit of liberty, riding
in a chariot of the sun, shall guide a greater host made up of all
the peoples who revere the treasures of art and architecture, and law
and liberty, and will ride on to a victory that will be the sublimest
conquest in the annals of time.