[F] The narrative was given to Reuter’s special correspondent at Rotterdam.
[G] Writing in the Daily Telegraph of the destroyed art treasures of Louvain, Sir Claude Phillips says: “The chief treasures of the church of Saint-Pierre de Louvain were two famous paintings by Dierick (or Thierry) Bouts, who is as closely identified with the now destroyed university city of Belgium as are the Van Eycks with Ghent and Bruges, and Roger van der Weyden with Tournay and Brussels. The earlier of these paintings is (or rather was) the remarkable triptych with the Martyrdom of St. Erasmus in the central panel, and the figures of St. Jerome and St. Bernard in the wings. This was seen at the Bruges retrospective exhibition of 1904. But perhaps the masterpiece of Dierick Bouts, and certainly one of the finest examples of Flemish fifteenth-century art, was the polyptych painted by him for the altar of the Holy Sacrament in the collegiate church of Saint-Pierre.
“The central panel of this work, whereupon was represented the Last Supper, was, until a few days ago, the chief adornment of that church and of the ancient city. One of the most accomplished writers on modern Netherlandish art, M. Fiérens-Gevaert, has written thus of this ‘Last Supper,’ by Bouts: ‘La Cène est une des œuvres les plus profondes, les mieux peintes du XVme siècle, et si l’on dressait une liste des cinq ou six chefs-d’œuvre de nos primitifs, il faudrait l’y comprendre.’ And in committing this act of hideous, wanton violence, this crime for which posterity will refuse to find words of pardon or excuse, the Prussian commander has also been guilty of an act of incredible ignorance, of boundless stupidity. For, strange to say, the splendid wings which once completed this famous altarpiece, and would, if a reconstruction could have been effected, have caused Bouts’s polyptych to stand forth one of the most important works of Flemish fifteenth-century art in existence—these wings are in Germany. In the Alte Pinakothek of Munich are preserved the ‘Gathering of the Manna’ and the ‘Meeting of Abraham and Melchisedech.’
“In the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum of Berlin are to be found ‘The Prophet Elijah in the Desert’ and the ‘Feast of Passover.’ It would obviously have been far better to steal this ‘Last Supper,’ this central jewel of the doomed city’s pictorial adornment, to confide it either to Munich or to Berlin, than thus to blot it out for ever. It would have been cruel, iniquitous, to despoil heroic Belgium; it is infamous, and, above all, it is stupid to tear out the heart of a masterpiece, to rob the world, and in punishing Belgium to punish Germany, to punish Europe. Napoleon, the ruthless plunderer of museums and churches, was mild and humane in comparison. If he stole, whether under forcibly imposed treaty or by sheer brute force, the accepted masterpieces of painting and sculptur belonging to the States which he overcame, he stole, with a certain reverence; much as the believer steals the most sacred treasures from the temple, or the most precious relics of the Passion and the saints from the church or the tomb. Robber though he was, he worshipped in awe-struck delight the masterpieces which he tore from the nations; and his triumphant fellow-countrymen, during the brief period of his supremacy, worshipped with him.
“Not less than ourselves must the students, the gallery directors, the art historians of Germany suffer, compelled as they are to look on helpless at this incredible act of sacrilege. It is they, indeed, who have most contributed to place before the world in their right perspective, to estimate at their true value the greatest examples of Netherlandish art in its early prime. It is their galleries which contain the most complete collections of these early Netherlandish masters. We challenge them to defy in this, if in this only, the ‘mailed fist’—to come forward and register their solemn protest against the greatest outrage upon civilisation, upon humanity, that the modern world has been called upon to witness.”
[H] Several German medical men of eminence, among them Dr. Moll, were alleged to have offered this suggestion. On the other hand, Dr. Kaufman, of Aix-la-Chapelle, in a letter to the Kölnische Volkszeitung, says that tales of German soldiers mutilated by Belgians—tales the circulation of which was officially countenanced—spread like wildfire among the soldiers, and a single case of a man being mutilated by a shell was magnified into an outrage, and this was only one of a hundred similar instances. The soldiers, by auto-suggestion, got to believe their own wild fancies, and by propagating their stories caused a most dangerous state of anger and exasperation in the German Army. At Huy, a German non-commissioned officer and a private had been wounded by shots. On the assertion that the shots had been fired by inhabitants the German commander, Major von Baschuitch, ordered a number of houses to be burned. The burgomaster, however, persuaded him to hold an inquiry. This proved that the shots had been fired by German soldiers in a drunken panic.
[I] Shortly before this atrocity, a proclamation had been issued at Liége ordering the citizens to raise their hats to German officers in the street, and to salute men of the rank and file. It was notified that if this command was not obeyed, the German soldiery were authorised to enforce “due respect.”
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected.