en 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 lives of the German prisoners. "They
are barbarians," they cried. "Kill them!" Archbishop Landreaux and
Abbe Chinot placed themselves in front of the wounded.

"Before you kill them," they cried, "you must first kill us."

This is not highly colored fiction, but fact. It is more than fact. It is
history, for the picture of the venerable archbishop, with his cathedral
blazing behind him, facing a mob of his own people in defence of their
enemies, will always live in the annals of this war and in the annals of
the church.

There were other features of this fire and bombardment which the
Catholic Church will not allow to be forgotten. The leaden roofs were
destroyed, the oak timbers that for several hundred years had
supported them were destroyed, stone statues and flying buttresses
weighing many tons were smashed into atoms, but not a single
crucifix was touched, not one waxen or wooden image of the Virgin
disturbed, not one painting of the Holy Family marred.

I saw the Gobelin tapestries, more precious than spun gold, intact,
while sparks fell about them, and lying beneath them were iron bolts
twisted by fire, broken rooftrees and beams still smouldering.

But the special Providence that saved the altars was not omnipotent.
The windows that were the glory of the cathedral were wrecked.
Through some the shells had passed, others the explosions had
blown into tiny fragments. Where, on my first visit, I saw 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 of years for Rheims have
sounded the angelus, were torn from their oak girders and melted into
black masses of silver and copper, without shape and without sound.
Never have I looked upon a picture of such pathos, of such wanton
and wicked destruction.

The towers still stand, the walls still stand, for beneath the roofs of
lead the roof of stone remained, but what is intact is a pitiful, distorted
mass where once were exquisite and noble features. It is like the face
of a beautiful saint scarred with vitriol.

Two days before, when I walked through the cathedral, the scene
was the same as when kings were crowned. You