This destruction of the Cathedral is typical of the purposeless barbarity of the whole proceeding. The wiping out of the town can serve no military purpose. There are no stores of munitions or railway communications to be demolished. Naturally there are no troops quartered in the town, and now all extensive movements of convoys are conducted by other roads than those leading through the town. Yet the bombardment continues day after day, and week after week. The Germans are sending in about £5,000,000 worth of shells a month. ‘It’s spite,’ a poilu said to me; ‘they have made up their minds to destroy the town since they can’t capture it; but it will be very valuable as an iron mine after the war.’
THE SPINE OF AN EMPIRE.
BY MAJOR-GEN. G. F. MACMUNN, C.B., D.S.O.
In Agypt’s land on banks of Noile
King Pharaoh’s royal daughter went to bath in shtoile;
She had her dip and hied into the land,
To dry her royal pelt she ran along the sand.
A Bulrush thripped her and at her foot she saw
The little Moases, in a wad of sthraw.