There is that in man which enables him to meet every blow of fate with unblanched face—save one. When the blow is aimed at his soul, then he shrivels. It was in her soul that this woman was smitten, as she saw the house of her God thus. And that is why there in the land of death the churches and cathedrals are all in ruins. To make the altars of Arras gaze on the clouds and the stars, and make the winds wail through the colonnades of Rheims, was deemed the surest and swiftest way of spreading terror and affright. So the devotées of Odin declared war upon God. For a little while the tribal deity and the belligerent dynast reign supreme. The homeless and bereft, the great multitude who are as those standing on the rubble-heap, are verily left with nothing but their eyes to weep with.
It is amazing how soon one gets assimilated to the most horrifying environment. In a few days one can walk through a town which has been turned into heaps without even a shock of wonder, just as at home one reads the war news and the list of the dead without any realization. In these days we need to be stung broad awake now and then. A city in ruins becomes deadly monotonous—until one is wakened.
One day, when the sun broke forth heralding the Spring, the promise of green on a clump of tangled rose bushes tempted me to turn into the garden of a shattered villa. It was as thousands of others: the hearthstones looked upward to the clouds, and the household goods lay piled tier on tier of rotting lumber as floor fell on floor. In the centre of the green a shell hole took my eye, and I picked my way toward it. Out of the earth at the bottom of the hole there obtruded the bones of a man's arm. In haste, the dead had been thrown into the shell hole and lightly covered. And the rains had washed so much of the earth away. And that bone brought the realization that I stood in the midst of one vast cemetery.
Everywhere and all around under the feet are the nameless dead—men, women, and little children. These last are the nightmare of this horror. Formerly nations recovered from war swiftly; the cradles filled up the gaps. But here the children are dead. To the eye of faith the Star of the East shines still with splendor over every spot where a babe lies. But that Star has been extinguished in this region of doom. The altar is buried, the hearthstone is in the rain, and amid the welter of rubbish you can see the children's cots twisted and rusting and woeful. A woman breaking into sobs inside a ruined church door; a body in a shell hole in a garden, a child's cot rusting on a rubbish heap—these open the eyes and make them see.
These things did not come by the arbitrament of war. It wasn't shrapnel and high explosives that wrought the desolation. From the battlements of the old citadel one can see the dead town lie spread, and the houses hit by shells are few and far between. The houses destroyed wantonly by the enemy ere they retreated are easily recognized, for the walls fell outward by the internal explosions. Ninety-five per cent. have fallen outward, and the wall of the church is likewise. This ancient sanctuary was wantonly destroyed by the retreating enemy. What amazes one is the appalling stupidity of such a crime. If the Germans destroyed the town, that was their right, the might of the sword, and their act could perhaps be justified. But to destroy the church is to destroy what even Attila spared, and so outrage the conscience and instinct of the world. There is never an excuse to seek when an outrage is perpetrated by the enemy. A hospital ship is sunk—but, of course, it is carrying munitions! A church is turned into a ruin, but its towers are used as observation posts! Poor little towers in a land of airplanes and captive balloons! If the churches had been spared, as they were spared in the world's darkest ages, humanity would know that the German soul was still alive. But now the world knows that it is up against an enemy that threatens body and soul alike—an enemy that not only kills the body, but destroys the soul! What an amazing stupidity!—but it is through such stupidity that God lays up judgment against the day of wrath.
Lloyd George and General Maurice
A Speech in Which the Premier Routed His Enemies and Revealed Some Inside Facts
A flurry arose in British Parliamentary circles early in May which for a day or so threatened to wreck the Lloyd George Government, but which resulted in a new triumph for the Premier and a humiliating defeat for those who had intrigued against him. It was precipitated by Major Gen. Sir Frederick Barton Maurice, who had been Director of Military Operations until April, 1918, when he was succeeded by Brig. Gen. Radcliffe. His removal had been due to a public utterance in which he had criticised General Foch for not coming sooner to the assistance of the British after the beginning of the German offensive.
On May 7 General Maurice published a letter in which he definitely asserted that the Premier had made a misleading statement to the House of Commons April 9, when he asserted that the British Army in France on Jan. 1, 1918, was considerably stronger than on Jan. 1, 1917; that he misstated the facts regarding the number of white divisions in Egypt and Palestine; also that Bonar Law, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had made a misstatement in denying that the extension of the British front in France had been ordered by the Versailles War Council.