German Atrocities: Their Nature and Philosophy

by Newell Dwight Hillis

Rheims Cathedral

One of the atrocities that has horrified the civilized world has been the ruin of Rheims Cathedral. Germany, of course, was denied by nature any gift of imagination. The German mind is a hearty, mediocre mind, that can multiply and exploit the inventions and discoveries of the other races. The Germans contributed practically nothing to the invention of the locomotive, the steamboat, the Marconigram, the automobile, the airplane, the phonograph, the sewing machine, the reaper, the electric light. Even as to the weapons with which she fights, Americans invented for Germany her revolver, her machine gun, her turreted ship, and her submarine. In retrospect it seems absolutely incredible that Germany could have been so helplessly and hopelessly unequal to the invention of the tools that have made her rich.

But imagination is not her gift. If Sheffield can give her a model knife, Germany can reproduce that knife in quantities and undersell Sheffield. The German people keep step in a regiment, in a factory and on a ship, and therefore are wholesalers. The French mind is creative. It stands for individual excellence, and is at the other extreme from the German temperament. The emblem of the German intellect is beer; the emblem of the English intellect is port wine; the emblem of the French mind is champagne; the emblem of an American intellect like Emerson's is a beaker filled with sunshine—but Germany has a "beer" mind. It is this lack of imagination that explains Nietzsche's statement that for two hundred years Germany has been "the enemy of culture" while Heinrich Heine insists that "the very name of culture is France."

It is this total lack of any appreciation of art and architecture that explains Germany's destruction of some of the noblest buildings of the world. She cannot by any chance conceive how the other races look upon her vandalism. Her own foreign secretary expressed it publicly in one of her state papers, "Let the neutrals cease chattering about cathedrals. Germany does not care one straw if all the galleries and churches in the world were destroyed, providing we gain our military ends." Guizot in his history of civilization presents three tests of a civilized people: First, they revere their pledges and honour; second, they reverence and pursue the beautiful in painting, architecture and literature; third, they exhibit sympathy in reform towards the poor, the weak and the unfortunate.

Now apply those tests to the Kaiser and his War Staff, and you understand why Rheims Cathedral is a ruin.[2] No building since the Parthenon was more precious to the world's culture. What majesty and dignity in the lines! What a wealth of statuary! How wonderful the Twelfth Century glass! With what lightness did these arches leap into the air! Now, the great bombs have torn holes through the roof; only little bits of glass remain; broken are the arches, ruined these flying buttresses, the altar where Jeanne d'Arc stood at the crowning of Charles is quite gone. The great library, the bishop's palace, all the art treasures are in ruins. But ancient and noble buildings do not belong to a race, they belong to the world. Sacred forever the threshold of the Parthenon, once pressed by the feet of Socrates and Plato! Thrice sacred that aisle of Santa Croce in Florence, dear to Dante and Savonarola. To be treasured forever the solemn beauty of Westminster Abbey, holding the dust of men of supreme genius.

In front of the wreck of the Cathedral of Rheims, all blackened with German fire, broken with the German hammer, is the statue of Jeanne d'Arc. There she stands, immortal forever, guiding the steed of the sun with the left hand, lifting the banners of peace and liberty with the right. By some strange chance, no bomb injured that bronze. That figure seems a beautiful prophecy of a day when the spirit of liberty, riding in a chariot of the sun, shall guide a greater host made up of all the peoples who revere the treasures of art and architecture, and law and liberty, and will ride on to a victory that will be the sublimest conquest in the annals of time.

The Devastation of the French Home

But the ruin of his cathedrals, his galleries, his schoolhouses, his libraries, his farmhouses, his vineyards and orchards, is the least of sorrows of the Frenchman. In a little village near Ham dwelt a man who had saved a fortune for his old age, 100,000 francs. When the invading army, like a black wave, was approaching, he buried his treasure beneath the large, flat stones that made the walk from the road up to the front step of his house. Then, with the other villagers, the old man fled. Many months passed by, while the Germans bombarded the village. At last the German wave retreated, and once more the old man drew near to his little village. There was nothing, nothing left. After a long time, he located the street, which was on the very edge of the town, but could not find the cellar of his own house. Great shells had fallen. Exploding in the cellar, they had blown the bricks away. Then other shells had fallen hard by and blown dirt that filled up what once had been a cellar. The very trees in front of his house had been blown away and replaced by shell pits. In one of his reports Ambassador Sharp states that the aged man had up to that time failed to locate his house, much less his buried treasure. But what trifles light as air are houses in contrast with other forms of desolation!