him
as a nickname.

In America Brown's statement provoked a storm of retort. Allied
correspondents claimed that a dozen shots at least crashed through the
roof, set the scaffolding ablaze, and that, at a time when Red Cross
flags were floating from the tower and red crosses were painted on the
roof, shells continued to devastate the beautiful interior, etc., etc.
There has been a quantity of discussion back and forth as to the number
of shots fired. Now, so far as the question of atrocity is concerned,
though every one will regret the ruin of this noble work of art, I hold
that it is not of the slightest importance whether there were fired two
shells or seventeen or seventy-seven. The important and only question at
issue is, whether the tower was used for observation purposes, or, in
other words, was there military justification for its attempted
destruction?

Military men, English as well as German, to whom I have talked, take it
as a matter of course that the highest spot in any locality is used for
observation. As an English officer in Antwerp put it, "If the French
did not use the church tower they are d------fools."

By way of guide and for sake of likely comparison I can state what I
know did happen in two other cities: Termonde and Antwerp. In Chapter
II of this book I have told how we made our way across the broken bridge
at Termonde on the day of its second bombardment, and how that night
word came to us of the manner in which the Belgians took revenge on the
conquerors. I told how staff officers, entering with a scouting party
at the head of a German column, mounted the only remaining spire in the
town. With a few well-directed shots from their concealed batteries
west of the river, the Belgians destroyed the tower and killed the
officers. The Belgians took no little pride in their marksmanship on
that occasion, and boasted freely of it. In this case, the use, and
therefore the destruction, of the observation-post was looked upon by
the Belgians as a natural and necessary instance of the work of war. As
evidence, it is rather valuable because given unconsciously and without
motive.

Likewise at Antwerp. In all probability the fact has never been
appreciated that during the bombardment of this city,--the most
important, from a military point of view, in Belgium,--the spire of the
Notre Dame Cathedral was used as an outlook-station by the Belgian
defenders, if not by both Belgians and English. O