I have in my possession several photographs of a ruined studio. Some
twenty or thirty Germans dashed into a little French village one day,
and demanded at the point of their automatic pistols the surrender by
the women of their rings, jewelry, money and their varied treasure. At
the edge of the village was a simple little summer-house, in which one
of the French artists had his studio. He had been in that valley for
three months, sketching, and working very hard. Knowing that they had
but a little time in which to do their work as vandals, the Huns started
to ruin the studio. With big knives they cut the fine canvases into
ruins. They knocked down the marbles, and the bronzes; the little bust
from the hand of Rodin was smashed with a hammer. The bronze brought
from Rome was pounded until the face was ruined. One blow of the hammer
smashed the Chinese pottery, another broke the plates and the porcelain
into fragments. Then every corner of the room was defiled, and the pigs
fled from their filthy stye. Across one of the canvases the German
officer wrote the words, "This is my trademark." And every other part of
the canvas was cut to ribbons with his knife. No more convincing
evidence of the real German character can possibly be found than these
photographs of the interior of that ruined studio.
Here we have the reason why the Kaiser himself, who knew the German
through and through, called his people Huns. Long ago the first Huns
entered Italy. They found a city of marble, ivory, and silver. They left
it a heap and a ruin. They had no understanding of a palace; they did
not know what a picture meant, or a marble; they were irritated by the
superiority of the Roman. What they could not understand they determined
to destroy. That is one of the reasons why all the marbles and bronzes
that we have in Italy are marred and injured. The head of Jupiter is
cracked; the Venus di Milo has no arms; Aphrodite has been repaired with
plaster; Apollo has lost a part of his neck and one leg. From time to
time an old marble is dug up in a field, where some ploughman has
chanced upon the treasure. Owners hid their beautiful statues, ivories
and bronzes, to save them from the vandals. Unfortunately, the modern
Huns rushed into the French towns, riding in automobiles, and sculptors
and painters had no time to hide their treasures. The great cathedrals
could not be hidden. The Kaiser in one of his recent statements boasted
that he had destroyed seventy-three cathedrals in Belgium and France. It
is all too true. From the beginning, the Cathedral of Rheims, dear to
the whole world, and glorious through the associations of Jeanne d'Arc,
was doomed, because the Germans, having no treasure of their own, and
incapable of producing such a cathedral, determined that France should
not have that treasure. The other day, in Kentucky, a negro jockey came
in at the tail end of a race, ten rods behind his rival. That night, the
negro bought a pint of whiskey, and determined to have vengeance, so he
went out at midnight, and cut the hamstrings of the beautiful horse that
had defeated his own beast. Now that is precisely the spirit that
animated the German War Staff and the men that have devastated France
and Belgium, and every man who has witnessed these German crimes with
his own eyes will never be the same person again. His whole attitude
towards the Hun is an attitude of horror and revulsion. A certain noble
anger burns within him, as burned that noble passion in Dante against
those criminals who spoiled Florence of her treasures.