“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.
ARTHUR MORRISON
THE BRAGGART
“It was I who opened fire on Rheims.”