MARTYRDOM THAT ENNOBLES.
To illustrate this memorial, which is first addressed to the Friends of the Beautiful, and whose object is to touch the heart, we give a sonnet of M. Edmond Rostand. It is entitled, "The Cathedral," and will show that pride may be taken by the victim of violence, and that a crime against the beautiful diminishes only the brute who commits it:
Nought have they done but render it more immortal! The work does not perish that a scoundrel has struck. Ask Phidias, then, or ask of Rodin if before bits of his work men no longer say, "It is his!" The fortress dies when once dismantled, but the temple shattered lives but the more nobly; and our eyes, of a sudden, remember the roof with disdain and prefer to see the sky in the lace work of the stone. Let us give thanks, since till now we lacked what the Greeks possess on the hill of gold—the symbol of beauty consecrated by insult! Let us give thanks to the layers of the stupid cannon, since from their German skill there results for them—shame; for us—a Parthenon!
No. 3.
A SOLEMN PROTEST.
We mean the one issued on the 29th of October by the Académie Française at one of its sessions, meeting under the Presidency of M. Marcel Prévost, M. Etienne Lamy being Perpetual Secretary. The President of the Republic, M. Raymond Poincaré, made it a point to be present at this session, and here is the document that, after long deliberation, was approved by the unanimous vote of the members present:
The Académie Française protests against all the affirmations by which Germany lyingly imputes to France or to its allies the responsibility for the war.
It protests against all the negations opposed to the evident authenticity of the abominable acts committed by the German armies.
In the name of French civilization and human civilization, it stigmatizes the violators of Belgian neutrality, the killers of women and children, the savage destroyers of noble monuments of the past, the incendiaries of the University of Louvain, of the Cathedral of Rheims, and those who wanted also to burn Notre Dame.
It expresses its enthusiasm for the armies that struggle against the coalition of Germany and Austria.