The lily-garden in the little Brussels by-street on the way to the Bois de la Cambre, if it is still in existence, must have ceased blooming before the Germans entered Brussels. Otherwise it is not likely that it should have escaped the fury of destruction which seizes them at the sight of anything pure and noble and beautiful.
“Consider the lilies.”
We know how the Uhlan officers deliberately rode backwards and forwards over the blooming flower-beds in the great Place upon the day of their entrance march.
We know how they stabled their horses in the world-famous conservatories of the Palace of Laecken—a custom they have practised at nearly every château in the country; how in that orgy which will for ever disgrace the name of the Duke of Brunswick the portrait of the young Queen of the Belgians, that royal flower of courage and devotion, was unspeakably insulted.
We know how whole regiments have trampled over straggling children in the village streets—these little flower blossoms, as the Japanese call them.
And those humble lilies of the cloister that have fallen into sacrilegious grasp, we know how they have been considered; how Rheims, with its hawthorn porch, blossoming in stone flower of all the Christian shrines of all the world, stately lily of the days of faith, has fared at the hand of the German.
“Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint,” says the Spirit of Evil in Goethe’s “Faust.”
It has always seemed a marvellous definition; the negation of good, the spirit that ever denies. But the demon of present-day Germany comes from a deeper pit than Goethe’s intellectual mocking devil. It is the spirit that forever destroys.
The struggle has not brutalized but spiritualized our men. Through the appalling conditions in which they fight they reach out to the mystic side of things. When they speak of death they call it “going west.” It is the old, old Celtic thought of the Isle beyond the Sunset. They “talk of God a great deal,” as the soldiers’ letters tell us. The Irish Guards fell on their knees at Compiègne before making their famous attack up the hill. As they charged, “our men crossed the plain, hurrahing and singing, while many of them had a look of absolute joy on their faces.” They have their visions. A soldier lying wounded and helpless on the field and gazing agonized on the breach in our line, saw the Germans rush and then fall back; and beheld St. George standing in his armour in the gap; then heard the Lancastrians cry, as they dashed on: “St. George for England!”
What yet more august revelation did he have, that dying French sergeant, who, looking profoundly upon the surgeon who was ministering to him, replied to his encouragement: