There were cities in Belgium of medieval loveliness, where
the evening light lay in deep purple on canals seeping at
foundations of castle and church, with the sacred towers
tall in the sky, and a moon just over them, and a star or
two beside.
That beauty has been torn out of a man's consciousness and
spoiled to his love for ever, by moving up a howitzer and
priming it with destruction. First, the rumble of the gun
from far away, then the whistle of flying metal, sharpening
its anger as it nears, then the thud and roar of explosion
as it clutches and dissolves its mark. Now its seven-mile
journey is ended. It has found its home and its home is a
ruin. Over the peaceful earth and under a silent sky, bits
of destruction are travelling, projections of the human
will. Where lately there was a soft outline, rising from the
soil as if the stones of the field had been called together
by the same breath that spread the forest, now there is a
heap of rock-dust. Man, infinite in faculty, has narrowed
his devising to the uses of havoc. He has lifted his hand
against the immortal part of himself. He has said--"The
works I have wrought I will turn back to the dust out of
which they came."
All the good labor of minds and hands which we cannot bring
back is undone in an instant of time by a few pounds of
chemical. That can be burned and broken in the passage of
one cloud over the moon which not all the years of a century
will restore. Seasons return, but not to us returns the
light in the windows of Rheims.
V