With the Allies

e the stained-glass windows, with those in the cathedrals of Chartres and Burgos, Spain, are the most beautiful in all the world. Children know Rheims thro

occupied it until the 12th, when they retreated

entered Rheims, the Germans bombarded

he city until three o'clock in the afternoon. At that hour the French artillery, to the east at Nogent and immediately outside the nort

lling on other buildings was about six to one. So what damage the cathedral suffered was from blows

you stand in the square beneath and look up, it is entirely ecclesiastic, of noble and magnificent proportions, in design inspired, much too sublime for the kings it has crowned, and almost worthy of the king in whose honor, seven hundred years ago, it was reared. It has been called "perhaps the most beautiful

one of those of the saints carved in stone, and as gentle. He was curé doyen of the Church of St. Jacques, M. Chanoine Frezet, and he explained the pools of blood. Aft

s the edifice that many chapels are lost in it, and the lower half is in a shadow. But from high above the stained windows of the thirteen

n and women have knelt in prayer, where Joan of Arc helped place the crown on Charles VII, was piled three feet of dirty straw, and on the straw were gray-coated Germans, covered with the mud of the fields, caked with blood, white and haggard from the loss of it, from the lack of sleep, rest, and

already had paid the penalty. And so two of them, done with pack-drill, goose-step, half rations and forced marches, lay under the straw the pr

es. Only their eyes showed that they lived. These were turned beseechingly upon the French Red Cross doctors, kneeling waist-high in the straw and unreeling long white bandages. T

s foot, his arms outstretched, clutching the air. To guide him a priest took his arm, and the officer turned and stumbled against him. Thinking the priest was one of his own men, he swore

battle. "Every summer," he said, "thousands of your fellow countrymen visit the cathedral. They come again and aga

en hurled through the embrasures, tangled masses of leaden window-sashes, like twisted coils of barbed wire, and great brass candelabra. The steel ropes that supported them had been shot away, and they had plunged to the flagging below, carrying with the

s died. Diamonds can be bought anywhere, pearls can be matched, but not the stained glass of Rheims. And under our feet, with straw and caked blood

n flashing breastplates at manoeuvres, galloping past him, shouting "

s peasant soldiers with their toes sticking stiffly through the straw, and the windows of

and running through the streets leading west, trembling, weeping, incoherent with terror, carrying nothing with them. Others were continuing the routine of life with anxious faces but making no other sign. The great majority had moved to the west of the city to the Paris gate, and

In one a fire was burning briskly, and firemen were playing on it with hose. I was their only audience. A sight that at other times would have collected half of Rheims and blocked traffic, in the excitement of the bombardment failed to attract. The Germans were using howitzers. Where shells hit in the s

chimneys. When the shell exploded the roof and chimneys disappeared. You did not see them sink and tumble; they merely vanished. Th

s forward to the French batteries the officers in charge of the barricades refused permission. At this end of the town, held in reserve in case of a German adv

r have seen men more fit. Where Germans are haggard and show need of f

, and when in Belgium by the Allies. But when the Germans pass the people hide everything eat

ow him, and all men spoke well of him. They liked him because he stuck to his p

ck. He waited until two houses within a hundred yards of him were knocked down, and then went away from there, leaving word with the sentry t

from one sidewalk to the other, and as shells burst above them prayed aloud and crossed themselves. Others were busy behind the counters of their shops serving customers, and o

it tinkled musically. With inborn sense of order, some of the housewives abandoned their knitting and calmly swept up the glass into neat piles. Habit is often so much stronger than fear. So is curiosity. All the boys and many young men and maidens were in the middle of

me the table-d'h?te dinner was ready. Not wishing to miss dinner, I halted an aged citizen who was fleeing from the city and asked him to carry a note to the American consul inviting him to dine. But the

enough without being shelled at home. It is a commonplace, but it is nevertheless true that in war it is the women who suffer. The proprietress walked around the table,

next morning it woke me, and as I departed for Paris sa

hattered windows, and broken carvings that littered the street presented a picture of melancholy and useless desolation. Around three sides of the square not a building was intact. But facing the wreckage the

pers also gave the two official excuses offered by the Germans for the destruction of the church. One was th

oint beyond the mark and one short of it. From the explosions of these two shells the gunner is able to determine how far he is off the target and accordingly regulates his sights. Not more, at the most, than three of these experimental brace shots should be necessa

le after the range was determined. They all agreed that after his range was found an artillery officer who

n the towers of the cathedral no quick-firing guns should be placed, and by both sides this agreement was observed. After entering Rheims the French, to protect the innocent citizens against bombs dropped by German air-ships, for two nights placed a search-light on the towers, but, fearing this might be considered a breach of agreement as to the mitrailleuses, the abbé Chinot ordered the searc

Germans still were shelling it. Two shells fell within twenty-five yards of us.

a shell set fire to the outer roof of the cathedral, which is of lead and oak. The fire spread to the scaffolding and from the scaffolding to the wooden b

and, under the direction of the Archbishop of Rheims, they carried on stretchers from the burning building the wounded Germans. The rescuing parties were not a minute too

timbers, the priests, at the risk of their lives and

been killed by the bombardment, and by the loss of their cathedral, the people of Rheims who were gathered about the burning building called for the liv

m," they cried, "you

f the venerable archbishop, with his cathedral blazing behind him, facing a mob of his own people in

e oak timbers that for several hundred years had supported them were destroyed, stone statues and flying buttresses weighing many tons were smashed

, while sparks fell about them, and lying beneath them were iron b

in the stained glass gaping holes, now the whole window had been torn from the walls. Statues of saints and crusader and cherubim lay in mangled fragments. The great bells, each of which is as large as the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, that for hundreds

f stone remained, but what is intact is a pitiful, distorted mass where once were exqui

an of Arc received the homage of France. When I returned I walked upon charred ashes, broken stone, and shattered glass. Wh

bishop was gutted, the chapel and the robing-room of the kings were cellars filled with rubbish. Of them only crumbling walls remain. And o

he cathedral. Shells that fell short of the cathedral for a quarter of a mile destroyed entirely three city blocks. The heart of this district is the Place Godi

batteries did not hit. If Rheims accepts the German excuse she might suggest to them

s slight. Houses wrecked by shells where there was no fire outnumbered those that were burned ten to one. In no house wa

ed injury. They were filled with American typewriters, sewing-machines, and cameras. A number of

, with his wife and son has held the fort and tactfully looked after the interests of both Americans and Germans. On both sides

ass of his windows. He was patching the holes with brown wrapping-paper, but was chiefly concerned because in his own garden the dahlias were broken. During the first part of the bombardment, when firing becam

of military operations was removed the champagne crop for this year would be entirely wasted. It promised to be an especially good year. The seasons were

ifty million bottles of champagne belonging to six of the best-known houses. Should shells reach

lling and houses as yet intact, and those partly destroyed were empty. You saw pitiful attempts to save the pieces. In places, as though evictions were going

and horror the citizens of Rheims of all classes seemed drawn closely together.

. In the Rue du Cardinal du Lorraine every house was gone. Where they once stood were cellars filled with powdered stone. Tall chimneys that one would

were the work of masons and carpenters. It was as though the shell had a gr

with the moss of centuries smashed. In many places, still on the pedestal, y

, still clung to it, although it was divided into a thousand fragments. Of one house all that was left standing was a slice of the fr

und. The silence, the gaping holes in the sidewalk, the ghastly tributes to the power of the shells, and the complete desolation, mad

s with no one guarding them. They were things of price that one may not

g-rooms filled my pockets. Shopkeepers had gone without waiting to lock their doors, and in houses the fronts

sis nothing had been disturbed. Hanging from the walls, on diamond- shaped lattices, roses were still in bloom, and along the gravel walks flowers of every color raised their petals to the sunshine.

The legs are wide apart, the arms folded, the head thrown back in an ecstasy of laughter. It looked exactly as though it were laughing at the wreckage with which it was surrounded. No