The real things of life are coming into view through the revealing fires of the battle-field, and the new experiences of men confronted at last by everlasting truths. With the destruction of each work of old art comes a new duty that demands all that is best and strongest and most sincere in every man--the duty of making good the loss, in kind; the duty of building a new civilisation and a new culture on the old foundations now revealed through the burning away of the useless cumbrances of futile superstructures; the duty of making a Cathedral of Reims possible again, not through self-conscious and competent premeditation but because at last men have come to their senses, regained their old standard of comparative values, and so can no more fail to build in the spirit of Reims and in reverence for the eternal truths it enshrined and set forth than could those who built it seven centuries ago in the sweat of their brows, the joy of their hearts, and the high devotion of their souls. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Heart of Europe, by Ralph Adams Cram