brief stay, though great spurts of smoke from a point in the air some distance away mark the premature explosion of a German missile. In Rheims itself, the curious indifference of civilians to the dangers of active warfare, which so surprised you when you first observed it on the eastern and western German battle fronts, again compels your notice. People are about the streets apparently as usual. Evidently it has been market day, and the market women are leisurely gathering their unsold stock. There is a shattered house here and there, and now and again, a hole in a wall, made by a German shell; though, in comparison with the artillery havoc you have so often seen in other places, the damage in Rheims does not startle you; perhaps familiarity with ruins wrought by battle has made anything but wholesale demolition commonplace. The cathedral has suffered considerable damage, though not nearly so much as you had expected; for you had thought it utterly reduced. Yet there it stands, its two noble towers rising against the sky in all their ancient majesty. But most of the old carved figures upon the archway of the right door are shattered and cracked off. Strangely enough, those adorning the central and left arches are, for the most part, intact. About the base of each entrance are thick layers of sandbags, perhaps fifteen or twenty feet high. These, you are informed, are to absorb the shock and prevent splintering in case a shell should fall at these points. The interior of the church is stripped and bare; the rich tapestries, you are told, were sent away before the Germans reached Rheims. Many of the medieval carvings on the pillars and walls at the front of the interior of the cathedral have been split off, the effect of fire, you are advised. Some of these have been collected and the slabs arranged upon the floor. The irreparable loss is the shattering of the priceless thirteenth century stained glass which made the glorious windows of the cathedral at Rheims artistic monuments of one craftsmanship of the middle ages now lost to the world. These bits of unrestorable art, so cunningly fixed in the marvelous pattern of these ancient and noble windows, were shaken from their places by the concussion of exploding shells; not one of these bulky missiles appears to have entered the windows themselves, whose intricate framework remains as the pious workmen made it hundreds of years ago. But the entire effect is ruined by the dislodgment of the countless pieces which have fallen away and been destroyed. Curiously enough, the modern glass, in one or two of the great lower windows, is not even cracked. It easily could have been replaced if destroyed; but the delicate and exquisite ancient glass of the splendid upper windows and those above the doors which were wont to give to the interior of the cathedral of Rheims its unearthly beauty, never can be restored. The arched flying buttresses supporting the walls from the outside have disappeared; and without these, you are informed, the cathedral walls will, in the course of time, give way; but skilled masonry and good engineering should be able to replace these massive supports in a comparatively short time. It was questioned, however, whether modern constructive craft is equal to the task. Strangely enough, the big building (the archiepiscopal palace) where the priests and cathedral attendants lived, which stood near the sacred edifice perhaps not two hundred feet away, is entirely demolished-by fire, you are told. Such was the condition of the cathedral at Rheims on the afternoon of February 26, 1915, as it appeared to an unskilled observer, upon hasty inspection. But the priest in charge said that it had been hit several times, although the solid heavy stone had withstood the shock; he said, too, that an unexploded shell at that moment was lying on the cathedral roof. But let us return to the scenes of the following day at another and far distant part of the battle line. Let us hark back through the zone of fire to that point of the extreme French front where the mighty artillery duel is leaping to one of its innumerable climaxes of ferocious activity, already described. And there, having seen all that is to be seen and heard more than plenty, but still fascinated and loath to leave, yet eager for the trenches, where an hitherto unwitnessed drama awaits you, these words are both regretted and welcomed: "We must be going, now, if you would like to see the trenches thoroughly. There is not more than enough time to do that well while there is clear daylight, for they are a considerable distance away," suggests an officer accompanying you. To the automobiles, then, you make your way, gently |