An interesting contribution to the testimony has been given by Cyril Brown, now special correspondent of the New York Times in Berlin. Brown made his way to the German army lines before Rheims, where, among others, he interviewed First Lieutenant Wengler, of the Heavy Artillery, commander of a battery which shelled the church spire, but known among his comrades as "the little friend of the Rheims Cathedral." According to Lieutenant Wengler two shots only struck the church spire (one from a fifteen centimeter howitzer, another from a twenty-one centimeter mortar) and this after French observers had used the tower for five days between September thirteenth and eighteenth. So sparing was this young "barbarian," in spite of provocative fire obviously directed from the French cathedral, that "the friend of the Rheims Cathedral" stuck to him as a nickname.
In America Brown's statement provoked a storm of retort. Allied correspondents claimed that a dozen shots at least crashed through the roof, set the scaffolding ablaze, and that, at a time when Red Cross flags were floating from the tower and red crosses were painted on the roof, shells continued to devastate the beautiful interior, etc., etc. There has been a quantity of discussion back and forth as to the number of shots fired. Now, so far as the question of atrocity is concerned, though every one will regret the ruin of this noble work of art, I hold that it is not of the slightest importance whether there were fired two shells or seventeen or seventy-seven. The important and only question at issue is, whether the tower was used for observation purposes, or, in other words, was there military justification for its attempted destruction?
Military men, English as well as German, to whom I have talked, take it as a matter of course that the highest spot in any locality is used for observation. As an English officer in Antwerp put it, "If the French did not use the church tower they are d———fools."
By way of guide and for sake of likely comparison I can state what I know did happen in two other cities: Termonde and Antwerp. In Chapter II of this book I have told how we made our way across the broken bridge at Termonde on the day of its second bombardment, and how that night word came to us of the manner in which the Belgians took revenge on the conquerors. I told how staff officers, entering with a scouting party at the head of a German column, mounted the only remaining spire in the town. With a few well-directed shots from their concealed batteries west of the river, the Belgians destroyed the tower and killed the officers. The Belgians took no little pride in their marksmanship on that occasion, and boasted freely of it. In this case, the use, and therefore the destruction, of the observation-post was looked upon by the Belgians as a natural and necessary instance of the work of war. As evidence, it is rather valuable because given unconsciously and without motive.
Likewise at Antwerp. In all probability the fact has never been appreciated that during the bombardment of this city,—the most important, from a military point of view, in Belgium,—the spire of the Notre Dame Cathedral was used as an outlook-station by the Belgian defenders, if not by both Belgians and English. On the inadvertent testimony of English themselves I know this to be true. On the second night of the Antwerp bombardment the Americans who had not left the city were gathered in the almost deserted Queen's Hotel along the water front. Some time during the evening, I don't remember just when, but it was while the British retreat was going on, an English lad called Lucien Arthur Jones burst in upon us. At no little risk he had dodged through the deserted streets and falling shells, much elated over the view of the enemy he had just got from the cathedral tower.
"I've had bully luck," he confided to me, after I had done him a noble service (i.e., lent him a safety razor). "Belgian signal officers took me up to the tower, where they can see everything the Germans are doing."
The following is taken from his account—an Englishman's account— printed in the London Chronicle, and copied in the New York Times, Tribune, and other papers:—
"I now return to the events of Thursday. At 12.30 o'clock in the afternoon, when the bombardment had already lasted over twelve hours, through the courtesy of a Belgian officer, I was able to ascend to the roof of the cathedral, and from that point of vantage I looked down upon the scene in the city. I could just discern through my glasses dimly in the distance the instruments of culture of the attacking German forces ruthlessly pounding at the city and creeping nearer to it in the dark. At that moment I should say the enemy's front line was within four miles of Antwerp.
"From my elevated position I had an excellent view also of the great oil tanks on the opposite side of the Scheldt. They had been set on fire by four bombs from a German Taube, and a huge, thick volume of black smoke was ascending two hundred feet into the air. The oil had been burning furiously for several hours, and the whole neighborhood was enveloped in a mist of smoke.
"After watching for some considerable time the panorama of destruction that lay unrolled all around me, I came down from my post of observation on the cathedral roof, and at the very moment I reached the street a 28- centimeter shell struck a confectioner's shop between the Place Verte and the Place de Meir. It was one of these high-explosive shells, and the shop, a wooden structure, immediately burst into flames."