The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon Part 5

About noon a German colonel with the blazing firebrand in his right hand stood in front of Sister Julie's house. It has been said that there are flaming swords in the eyes of every good woman. In that terrible hour the face of Sister Julie proved the proverb. She told the German officer that these few houses that were left were filled with wounded French soldiers, with here and there a wounded German. The Hun answered that his men would remove the Germans who were wounded, but that the buildings must be fired. Behind him were several hundred buildings blazing like one fiery furnace. Sister Julie stood squarely across the path of the Hun. "While I live you shall not enter. You shall not kill these dying men. I swear it by this crucifix! Your hands are already red with blood. G.o.d dwells within this house. Look at this figure of Jesus, who said, 'Woe unto him that offends against one of my little ones.

These shall go away into everlasting h.e.l.l.' I myself will bear witness against you. You have murdered our fifteen old men. All their lives long these old men did us good and not evil. Look at the little girls you have slain. G.o.d Himself will strike you dead." General Clauss stood dumb. He was embarra.s.sed beyond all words. Fear also got hold upon him.

He turned and disappeared into a group of his soldiers. Two or three minutes pa.s.sed by. A German colonel came to Sister Julie. He told her that the houses used for wounded soldiers would be spared by General Clauss provided Sister Julie would agree to continue her ministrations to the wounded Germans lying in her hospital. As General Clauss already knew that this had already been done, and would be, the Germans marched away, leaving the hospital buildings uninjured. It was a victory of the soul of a n.o.ble woman.

One morning last summer Sister Julie showed her decorations. Her face was kind, gentle and motherly. Her atmosphere was peace and serenity.

She seemed a tower of strength. It must have been easy for dying French boys in those rooms to have identified Sister Julie with Mary the Mother, who saw her son dying on the cross. Later on we met an aged woman of martyred Gerbeviller. She had been nursing in the hospital and had stood behind Sister Julie when she forbade General Clauss to light the firebrands. "What did Sister Julie say?" we asked the old woman.

"Oh, sir, I do not know, and yet I do know. She told them that she would ask G.o.d to strike them dead. In that moment I was afraid of her. She seemed to me more to be feared than General Clauss and all his wicked army. I can tell you what our good priest says about Sister Julie." "And what is that?" The old woman could not quote the verse accurately, but from what she said we were soon guided to a chapter in the old Bible, and there was the verse that described Sister Julie, with arms uplifted at the door of her hospital and denying access to General Clauss. The verse was this: "And lo! an angel with a flaming sword stood at the gate and kept the garden."

7. The Hidden Dynamite; the Hun's Destruction of Cathedrals

In one group of ruined cellars that was once a splendid French city, there is a beautiful building standing. It is rich with the art and architecture of the sixteenth century. The lines are most graceful and the structure is the fulfillment of Keats' line: "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." Such a building belongs not to the French nation, but to the whole human race. An architect like the man who planned this n.o.ble building is born only once in a thousand years. Every visitor to that ruined town asks himself this question: "Why did the Germans allow this building to remain?" An incident of the story of Bapaume throws a flood of light upon the problem.

One year ago, when the Germans were retreating from Bapaume, they looted every house, burned or dynamited every building save the Hotel de Ville.

That city hall the Germans left standing in all its majesty and beauty.

In front of the building they placed a placard containing in substance the statement that they left this building as a monument to Germany's love of art and architecture.

Secretly, however, in the cellar of this n.o.ble building the Germans buried several tons of dynamite. To this dynamite they attached a seven-day clock. They set the seven-day clock to explode at eleven o'clock one week after the Germans had retreated. These beasts worked out the theory that the largest possible number of British and French officers and public men would be inspecting the building at that hour of the day.

The plot was successful. Their devilish cunning was rewarded and their hate glutted. The clock struck the detonator, the dynamite exploded, blew the building and the visitors into atoms. Standing in the ruined public square, one sees nothing but that great sh.e.l.l pit where the earth opened up its mouth and swallowed a monument builded to beauty and grandeur. This other building, therefore, that stands in the city fifty miles to the south of Bapaume is there for the sole reason that the seven-day clock failed to explode the dynamite--not because of any love of architecture that possessed the Germans. It is there to tell us that some part of the mechanism of death failed to connect.

In a.n.a.lyzing the German mind nothing is more certain than the fact that they lack a fine sense of humour and are often quite devoid of imagination.

As for sculpture, nothing can be more hideous than the statues of the fifteen Prussian kings that do not decorate, but simply vulgarize, the avenue leading towards Magdeburg. The vast broad statue of Hindenburg, to which the Germans come to drive nails and scratch their names in lead pencils, reminds one of the occasional public buildings in this country defaced by thoughtless and vulgar boys. Nor is there anything in the world as ugly as the German sculptor's statue of the present Kaiser out at Potsdam Palace, unless it be the statue of an Indian in front of a tobacco store down in Smithville, Indian Territory, though even this is doubtful. It hardly seems possible that one earth only 7,000 miles in diameter could hold two statues as ugly as that of the Kaiser!

It is this singular lack of imagination and failure to understand the beautiful that explains the systematic destruction by the German army of the glorious cathedrals, the fourteenth century churches, libraries, chateaux and hotels des villes that were the glory and beauty of France.

"If we cannot have these vineyards and orchards," said the Germans, "Frenchmen shall not have them."

So they turned the land into a desert. Not otherwise the German seems to feel that if he cannot build structures as beautiful as these glorious buildings in France that he will not leave one of them standing.

Next to the Parthenon in Athens and St. Peter's in Rome, perhaps the world's best loved and most admired building was the Cathedral of Rheims. There Joan of Arc crowned Charles IX; there for centuries the n.o.blest men of France had gone to receive their offices and their honours. A building that belonged to the world. What treasures of beauty for the whole human race in the thousand and more statues in the cathedral! How priceless the twelfth-century stained gla.s.s! What paintings which have come down from the masters of Italy! Whoever visited the library and the Cardinal's palace without exclaiming: "What beautiful missals! What illuminated ma.n.u.scripts?"

Fully conscious of the fact that they were impotent to produce such treasures the Germans, unable to get closer to the cathedral than four miles, determined to destroy them. Day after day they bombed the n.o.ble cathedral. Gone now, too, the great stone roof! Fallen the flying b.u.t.tresses, ruined the chapels. Perished all the tapestries, the rugs and the laces. Water stands in puddles on the floor. The cathedral is a blackened sh.e.l.l.

The victim of grievous ingrat.i.tude, King Lear, was turned out into the snow and hail by his wicked daughters; and the white-haired old king wandered through the blackness of the night beneath the falling hail.

And, lo! the Cathedral of Rheims is a King Lear in architecture--broken, wounded, exposed to the hails of the autumn and the snow of the winter, through the coa.r.s.eness and vandalism of the Germans.

The German Foreign Minister put it all in one word: "Let the neutrals cease their everlasting chatter about the destruction of Rheims Cathedral. All the paintings, statues and cathedrals in the world are not so much as one straw to the Germans over against the gaining of our goal and the conquest of their land."

Never was a truer word spoken. The German lacks the imagination and the gift of the love of the beautiful. He would prefer one bologna sausage factory and one brewery to the Parthenon, with St. Peter's and Rheims Cathedral thrown in.

8. The German Sniper Who Hid Behind the Crucifix

For hundreds of years the French peasants have loved the crucifix. Many a beautiful woman carries a little gold cross with the figure of Jesus fastened thereto, and from time to time draws it out to press the crucifix to her lips. Even in the harvest fields and beside the road, travellers find the carved figure of the Saviour lifted up to draw poor, ignorant and sinful men to His own level.

One of the most glorious pieces of carving in France was wrought in walnut by a great sculptor and lifted up on a tree in the midst of an estate, where the peasants, resting from their work, could refresh their souls by love and faith and prayer.

One day last summer, during the Teuton advance, a German officer stood beneath that divine figure. Mentally he marked the place. That night when the darkness fell a company of German officers returned to that spot. One of them climbed up on the tree. He found that the carved figure of Jesus was life size.

With the end of a rope a little platform was drawn up level with the foot of the crucifix. Two ropes were fastened to the outstretched arms of the Saviour. Another rope was fastened around the neck of Jesus, until the platform was made safe. Then a German sniper with his gun climbed up on the platform. He laid his rifle upon the shoulders of the Divine Figure, hiding his body behind that of Jesus. The German officer must have chuckled with satisfaction, for he knew that he had found a screen behind which a murderer might hide, and the German villain was quite right in his psychology.

It was true that the French soldiers loved that beautiful figure. To them the crucifix was sacred. So beautiful were their ideals, so lofty their spirit, so pure and high their imagination, that they were incapable of conceiving that a German could use the sacred crucifix as a screen from which to send forth his murderous hail.

The green boughs of that tree hid the little puff of smoke. From time to time a French soldier would fall dead with a hole through his forehead.

Once a French officer threw up his hands while the blood streamed from his mouth and he pitched forward dead.

At last the French soldiers understood. There was a sniper behind Christ's cross. The French could have turned their cannon against that tree, but instead they simply kept below the trench until the night fell. Then in the darkness some French boys took their lives in their hands and crawled on hands and knees across No Man's Land. Lying on their backs they cut the wires above their heads.

By some strange providence they dropped safely into the German trench and crawled ten yards beyond. Then they climbed into the tree, removed that glorious crucifix with the carved figure, brought it back in safety and at daybreak turned their cannon on the tree and blew the platform to pieces.

Foul Huns had made a screen of that sacred figure, but the French were not willing to injure their ideals by shooting the crucifix to pieces.

To-day all the world despises the Germans. Nothing is sacred to them.

Their souls are dead within them and when the soul dies, everything dies.

The German's body may live on for twenty years, but you might as well p.r.o.nounce the funeral address to-day, for the soul of Germany is dead.

Nothing but a physical fighting machine now remains.

Meanwhile, France lives. Never were her ideals so lofty and pure. That is why the world loves France. She has kept faith with her ideals.

9. The Ruined Studio

I have in my possession several photographs of a ruined studio. Some twenty or thirty Germans dashed into a little French village one day, and demanded at the point of their automatic pistols the surrender by the women of their rings, jewelry, money and their varied treasure. At the edge of the village was a simple little summer-house, in which one of the French artists had his studio. He had been in that valley for three months, sketching, and working very hard. Knowing that they had but a little time in which to do their work as vandals, the Huns started to ruin the studio. With big knives they cut the fine canvases into ruins. They knocked down the marbles, and the bronzes; the little bust from the hand of Rodin was smashed with a hammer. The bronze brought from Rome was pounded until the face was ruined. One blow of the hammer smashed the Chinese pottery, another broke the plates and the porcelain into fragments. Then every corner of the room was defiled, and the pigs fled from their filthy stye. Across one of the canvases the German officer wrote the words, "This is my trademark." And every other part of the canvas was cut to ribbons with his knife. No more convincing evidence of the real German character can possibly be found than these photographs of the interior of that ruined studio.

Here we have the reason why the Kaiser himself, who knew the German through and through, called his people Huns. Long ago the first Huns entered Italy. They found a city of marble, ivory, and silver. They left it a heap and a ruin. They had no understanding of a palace; they did not know what a picture meant, or a marble; they were irritated by the superiority of the Roman. What they could not understand they determined to destroy. That is one of the reasons why all the marbles and bronzes that we have in Italy are marred and injured. The head of Jupiter is cracked; the Venus di Milo has no arms; Aphrodite has been repaired with plaster; Apollo has lost a part of his neck and one leg. From time to time an old marble is dug up in a field, where some ploughman has chanced upon the treasure. Owners hid their beautiful statues, ivories and bronzes, to save them from the vandals. Unfortunately, the modern Huns rushed into the French towns, riding in automobiles, and sculptors and painters had no time to hide their treasures. The great cathedrals could not be hidden. The Kaiser in one of his recent statements boasted that he had destroyed seventy-three cathedrals in Belgium and France. It is all too true. From the beginning, the Cathedral of Rheims, dear to the whole world, and glorious through the a.s.sociations of Jeanne d'Arc, was doomed, because the Germans, having no treasure of their own, and incapable of producing such a cathedral, determined that France should not have that treasure. The other day, in Kentucky, a negro jockey came in at the tail end of a race, ten rods behind his rival. That night, the negro bought a pint of whiskey, and determined to have vengeance, so he went out at midnight, and cut the hamstrings of the beautiful horse that had defeated his own beast. Now that is precisely the spirit that animated the German War Staff and the men that have devastated France and Belgium, and every man who has witnessed these German crimes with his own eyes will never be the same person again. His whole att.i.tude towards the Hun is an att.i.tude of horror and revulsion. A certain n.o.ble anger burns within him, as burned that n.o.ble pa.s.sion in Dante against those criminals who spoiled Florence of her treasures.

10. Was This Murder Justified?

One raw, December day, in 1914, an American gentleman, widely known as traveller and correspondent, was in a hospital in London, recovering from his wound, received in Belgium. He was startled by the appearance of an old Belgian priest, and a young Belgian woman. The American author was travelling in Belgium at the time of the German invasion. Quite unexpectedly he was caught behind the lines, near Louvain. Having heard his statement, the German officer recognized its truthfulness and sincerity, and insisted that this American scholar should be his guest at the Belgian chateau of which he had just taken possession. The German had already shot the Belgian owner, and one or two of the servants, who defended their master. To the horror and righteous anger of the American, the German officer took his place at the head of the table, waved the American to his seat, and ordered the young Belgian woman to perform her duties as hostess. In that tense moment, it was a matter of life and death to disobey. That German officer had his way, not only with the young Belgian wife, half dazed, half crazed, wholly broken in spirit, but with the American whom he sent forward to Brussels.

Plunged into the midst of many duties in connection with Americans and refugees who had to be gotten out of Belgium into England, this American author had to put aside temporarily any plan for the release of that young Belgian woman held in bondage. Later, when he was wounded, the American crossed to London for medical help. When the old Belgian priest and that young woman stood at the foot of his bed in the hospital in London, all the events of that terrible hour in the dining-room of the Belgian chateau returned, and once more he lived through that frightful scene. The purpose of the visit soon became evident. The old Belgian priest stated the problem. He began by saying that G.o.d alone could take human life since G.o.d alone could give it. He urged that the sorrow of the young woman's present was as nothing in comparison to the loss of her soul should she be guilty of infanticide. It was the plea of a man who lived for the old ideals. His white hair, his gentle face, his pure disinterested spirit lent weight to his words. Then came the statement of the young Belgian woman. She told the American author of the dreadful days and weeks that followed after his departure, that every conceivable agony was wrought upon her, and that now within a few months, she must have a child by that wicked German officer. She cried out that the very babe would be unclean, that it would be born a monster, that it was as if she was bringing into the world an evil thing, doomed in advance to direst h.e.l.l. That every day and every hour she felt that poison was running through her veins. She turned upon the old priest, saying, "You insist that G.o.d alone gives life! Nay, no, no, no! It was a German devil that gave me this life that now throbs within my body! And every moment I feel that that life is pollution. German blood is poisoned blood.

German blood is like putrefaction and decay, soiling my innermost life."

The young woman wept, prayed, plead, and finally in her desperation cried out, "Then I decide for myself! The responsibility is mine. I alone will bear it." And out of the hospital she swept with the dignity and beauty of the Lady of Sorrows.

A year later, in Paris, the French judge and court cleared the young girl who choked to death with a string the babe of the German officer who had attacked her. But since that time, all France and Belgium and the lands where there are refugees are discussing the question--Where does the right lie? Has the French mother, cruelly wounded, no right?

And this foul thing forced upon her a superior right? Which path for the bewildered girl leads to peace? Where does the Lord of Right stand? What chance has a babe born of a beast, abhorred and despised, when it comes into the world? The women of the world alone can answer this question.

IN FRANCE THE IMMORTAL!

IV

1. The Glory of the French Soldier's Heroism