One would think, according to M. de Bethmann-Hollweg, that the German dispatches are a source on which one can rely with full confidence, and one would imagine, too, since he had thus reproached us, that the German newspapers published the French dispatches.
As a matter of fact, they do not and if it is necessary to hear both sides to know the truth then the Germans are quite ignorant of it. They are indeed very far removed from knowing it, and it is a constant surprise to our officers and our soldiers to discover when they question their prisoners, the profound illusions under which they labor.
Dr. von Bode’s Polemic
Some time ago Dr. Wilhelm von Bode, the well-known director of the Berlin Art Museums and Germany's authority in matters of art, issued a justification of German conduct in Rheims and Louvain, which he supported by a review of Germany's world-contribution to art. "The German Science of Art and the War," was the title of the article. Jacques Mesnil, writing in the Mercure de France, presents a reply to Dr. von Bode's polemic.
He brands as infantile the reasoning by which Dr. Bode proves the German soldier incapable of destroying a work of art. The German professor stated that civilization, and with it art, could not have survived were it not for the protection of German militarism. M. Mesnil replies:
M. Bode should have been able to separate a little better two things which have nothing to do with each other: strategy and the history of art. He should have explained the conduct of the soldiers by the service which is required of them; he should have pointed out precisely the point of view of the archaeologist as incompatible with that of the warrior and he should have freed of responsibility those who, loving the picturesque old cities and the pure creations of artists, could not sympathize with those who destroy them.
Far from this, he has invoked the merits of German science to justify the outrages of the soldiery and in his eyes the fact that German savants have added to the progress of archaeology suffices to prove that the German army is incapable of destroying works of art.
Examination of Professor von Bode's claim that Germany leads the world in the "science of art," would seem to M. Mesnil to show that the German art-scientist is little more than a painstaking classifier, a mere cataloguer.
Taken as a whole, the art historians in Germany are a lot of excellent laborers, energetic and conscientious, who could render valuable service were they well directed. But it is precisely their direction which is at fault. Those among them who play the rôle of leader do not know how to distinguish the relative importance of the problems which come to their consideration; in confused multitude of facts, they follow a purely exterior and quite military order in their classifications; in the same way that a man in the army is a man only and that all the human units are in rigid divisions, so for the apostles of "the science of art" a fact is a fact and automatically falls under the head destined for it.