Monday, September 28th. At lunch today in the Café Royal I overheard a Frenchman remark that although he and all his compatriots greatly esteemed Mr. Herrick, it would nevertheless have been an excellent service against the enemy had he tactfully allowed himself to be annihilated by the German bomb which missed him yesterday. Later in the afternoon I took tea with Mr. Herrick at the Chancellerie, and he was much amused when I recounted to him this example of a somewhat equivocal good-will.
Tuesday, September 29th. The damage to Rheims Cathedral was largely the result of fire. The Germans had, during the time they held the city, converted it into a hospital; they had stacked the chairs against the walls and covered the floor deep with straw upon which to lay their wounded. During the spring and summer the front façade had been undergoing repairs and was covered with heavy wooden scaffolding similar to that which has for several years disfigured St. Sulpice in Paris. The Cathedral was very famous for its choir-stalls and other wood-carving, of which there was a great quantity, and the roof which covered the vaulting was held up by a forest of great timbers many centuries old.
After the Germans had been driven out of the city they bombarded it from the hills outside, and their shells lit the straw on the Cathedral floor. Over it the fire ran swiftly, ignited the chairs piled against the walls, and then spread to the great masses of carved woodwork; finally the scaffolding and roof caught fire and the famous old Cathedral burned in one great conflagration. It has been particularly famous for three things: its woodwork, its front façade, and its stained-glass windows. The woodwork went up in smoke, the front façade was all scorched and disintegrated by the intense heat so that the surface of the stone detail is blowing off in fine dust, while the glass to the last particle was shattered by the concussions of bursting shells. The Cathedral stands like a great skeleton of its former self. Its flesh, as it were, is gone although few of its bones are broken.
Saturday, October 3d. This is the first war in modern times in which whole nations have gone to battle; in this conflict every man in a nation is a soldier. In Napoleon’s day France had about the same population—forty millions—that she now has, but Napoleon’s professional armies numbered, at most, only two hundred thousand men, while today France has put fifteen or twenty times as many in the field. In the present war, when an army sustains a 10 per cent. loss it is not merely 10 per cent. of the army, but actually of the able-bodied men of the nation.
Wednesday, October 7th. A German aëroplane again threw bombs on Paris today.