And over all the grey haze of conflagration, mixing in one dark overhanging curtain with the yellow pestilent fumes of past bombardment. Beyond, on the further heights, the grey sky was seamed with the spurt and smoke of occasional bursting shells; and the ear, guided now by the eye, could distinguish from the rush of the wind the single explosions of the German shells and the nearer crash of the hidden French batteries, as they responded, firing across the hill at the unseen army. I would not, even if it had been easy, have approached nearer. Details of destruction could add nothing to the realisation of these monstrous reactions of war. This was, to myself, the second conscious shock in all the two months of warfare--Louvain was the first. The sight of dead and shattered bodies soon passes unrealised. There is nothing of the man who lived, even if we have known him well, left in lifeless remnants. What he meant and what he produced are no longer there. But to see a dead or an injured child, a mutilated work of art or thought, is to see the murder of men's souls: the defacing of the ideal which men live and die to conceive, to embody, and to leave as their contribution to the eternal principles of beauty and continuance. What has provoked this wanton, deliberate destruction? The anger of disappointed, hungry, chilled men in their realisation of failure and fatigue? The revenge for the death of some popular commander, some General von Revel, von Rapine, or von Ruin? Who can say yet? On the spot there seemed to be no "military" excuse, of tactics or precaution. It looked like the irresponsible outrage of a tipsy child with a heavy hammer. Whatever the conditions of ultimate peace, let us see to it that the hammer of ponderous armaments is forced from Germany's hands. The "philosophical Teuton brain" may then have time to clear itself of the fumes of a reeling militarism. The tapestries have been buried. It is reported that the treasures of the Cathedral are safe. Why, O why, was no effort made to remove the priceless windows in time? We did it in our Minsters as long ago as the seventeenth century, before the threat of bombardment; and the confidence in German "culture" cannot have been so deep-rooted! I was glad that I could not see the injury to the famous "rose" window in the west front, through which the sunset used to colour the pillars of the nave with a marvellous amber and gold light. As I passed by the town I met the venerable Cardinal Archbishop, in his robes, a strange contrast to the knots of uniformed soldiers and the few darkly-dressed, depressed inhabitants. He reached Paris, from the Conclave, two days ago, and, impatient of the absence of news, has come out to see for himself what has befallen his cathedral; and that in spite of the German raiding cars, that have fired on passengers on the roads from Paris yesterday and to-day, and of the proximity of the cannon. I took off my hat to a very gallant man.