|AESCITIS quâ horâ fur veniet" (Ye know not in what hour the despoiler
cometh) were the words of an inscription carved on the capstone of
a church porch in the fifteenth century by a monkish stonecutter,
overlooking a smiling valley in Picardy. That valley is now a waste
place; its once populous and peaceful villages are in ruins; its
fruitful orchards are gone; its murmuring streams have overflown their
banks, choked with the debris of war. No church towers are visible, nor
are there any forests left in the blasted expanse of shell-torn earth.
The joy felt by the people of this ravaged land over the retreat of
the invader, is turned to bitterness by the sight of so much wanton
destruction, for they realize that this once peaceful smiling land, the
richest region of France, is now a great desert waste strewn with ruins
of the priceless records of her glorious achievements in the world of
art. And this loss of these irreplaceable monuments is especially bitter
to a people so attuned to beauty. With a contemptuous disregard for
the accumulated animosity of the whole world, the Imperial high command
seems bent upon leaving its hall mark upon the evacuated country.
Acknowledging its inability to hold Rheims any longer, it retires its
great guns to a locality from which it sends hundreds of shells crashing
into that hapless town, and these are mainly aimed at the ruins of the
great Cathedral. "The ruin even of ruins," cries a correspondent of the
_Tribune_; adding, "In so many of the military transactions of the Hun
you may perceive the hatred of humanity that actuates him, his longing
to glut upon some personal victim the passion for destruction that is in
his soul."
Philip Gibbs, perhaps the fairest and most moderate of war
correspondents, in describing the retreat of March, 1917, deals with
the aspect of the country beyond the tract of shell craters, the smashed
barns and country houses and churches, the tattered tree trunks, and
great belts of barbed wire: "Behind the trenches are two towns and
villages in which they had their 'rest billets,' and it is in these
places that one sees the spirit and temper of the men whom the British
are fighting.
"All through this war I have tried to be fair and just to the Germans,
to give them credit for their courage and to pity them because the
terror of war has branded them as it has branded the British.
"But during these last days I have been sickened and saddened by the
things I have seen, because they reveal cruelty which is beyond the
inevitable villainy of war. They have spared nothing on the way of their
retreat. They have destroyed every village in their abandonment with
systematic and detailed destruction. Not only in (the towns of) Bapaume
and Péronne have they blown up or burned all the houses which were
untouched by shell-fire, but in scores of villages they laid waste the
cottages of poor peasants, and all their little farms, and all their
orchards. At Bethonvillers, to name only one village out of many, I saw
how each house was marked with a white cross before it was gutted with
fire. The Cross of Christ was used to mark the work of the devil, for
truly this has been the devil's work.
"Even if we grant that the destruction of houses in the wake of retreat
is the recognized cruelty of war, there are other things which I have
seen which are not pardonable, even of that damnable code of morality.
In Baupaume and Péronne, in Roye and Neslé and Lian-court, and all these
places over a wide area the German soldiers not only blew out the fronts
of houses, but with picks and axes smashed mirrors and furniture and
even picture frames.... There is nothing left in these towns. Family
portraits have been kicked into the débris of the gutters. The black
bonnets of old women who lived in these houses lie in the rubbish heaps,
and by some strange pitiful freak these are almost the only signs left
of the inhabitants who lived here before the soldiers wrecked their
houses.
"The ruins of houses are pitiful to see when done deliberately even when
shell-fire spared them in the war-zone, but worse than that is the ruin
of women and children and living flesh.
"I saw that ruin to-day in Roye and Neslé. At first I was rejoiced to
see how the inhabitants were liberated after being so long in hostile
lines.... The women's faces were dead faces, shallow and mask-like and
branded with the memories of great agonies. The children were white and
thin, so thin that the cheek bones protruded, and many of them seemed to
be idiot children. Hunger and fear had been with them too long."
This is the reverse of the pictures I found, during those calm and
beautiful summer days of 1910, in that sunny and prosperous land.
Pictures framed with quaint customs; the simple pleasures of fête
days enjoyed by a happy and prosperous peasantry, all unmindful of the
terrible days so soon to come upon them. "Nescitis qua horâ fur veniet."
How prophetic the warning words of that old monk inscribed upon the
capstone of that little church overlooking the green plains of Picardy!
And now what is left in place of the gray old churches, the quiet
monasteries, the fruitful farms and flocks and the dense forests? Where
now shall we look for the gleaming white walls of the turreted châteaux,
the precious mossy towers of mediaeval ruined castles; the somnolent
quaint towns with wandering streets filled with timbered, carved and
strangely gabled houses of half forgotten periods; the sleepy deserted
market places over which towered architectural treasures of town halls
famed throughout the world.
Where shall the artist seek the matchless châteaux gardens, which took
centuries in the making? Where seek the still reaches of silent canals
crossed here and there by arched stone bridges, all shaded by great
trees casting cool shadows in midday, or the vast dim interiors of
cathedrals marked with the skill of many ages,--filled with the aroma of
incense, and the inspiration of centuries of prayer?
"The old order changeth, giving place to new."
But at least one may be thankful now to have been privileged to know and
to have seen these wonderful and beautiful remains of that "old order."
And this feeling of gratitude tempers somewhat one's fury at the result
of this invasion and destruction. But one would not have these sacred
remains disturbed; there must be no attempt at restoration of these
matchless monuments, at the hands of well-meaning municipalities.
Rheims, Arras, Soissons, Lâon, must be left mainly as they now lie
prostrate, lasting memorials for future ages.
Leave to Dame Nature the task of draping them with green clinging
vines, and embossings of velvet moss. So let them remain in their solemn
majesty, monuments to the failure of an imperial order unhampered by the
love of mankind or the fear of God.