Even savages in war respect sacred places, but the Germans deliberately aimed their guns at them. No excuse can ever be accepted by the civilized world for this deliberate destruction, and certainly the excuse cannot be accepted by military men that the act was due to bad marksmanship. Other ancient churches were horribly damaged. The Germans stabled their horses in them, broke down the candelabra and statues, and carried away many valuable relics. The burning of the University buildings at Louvain completely destroyed the treasures that had been preserved for centuries. Priceless manuscripts, paintings that can never be replaced, and valuable books in rare bindings were lost to the world. The Germans scornfully but ignorantly declared, "Why should we care if every monument in the world is destroyed? We can build better ones." But the German idea of beauty is great strength and huge size. Their own public buildings and statues are often horrible in color, immense and awkward in appearance. They give people the impression of a fearsome brute spreading himself out before them. With few exceptions, there are no dainty figures and designs, nor any beautiful thoughts and feelings, as shown in the work of real artists. The old cathedral at Rheims can never be restored. No one can ever bring back the old beauty and color; no one can revive those statues and paintings so that ever again they will seem to breathe forth the soul of the artists who fashioned them seven hundred years ago. The walls may be rebuilt, and artists of tomorrow may beautify them, but the spirit of the great men of the Middle Ages is gone--it has fled from the place forever. Thus the Germans, not content with killing the bodies of men, have in this way killed the souls of some of the greatest of the geniuses of the past. How can she pay the damage, or meet a fitting punishment? * * * * * What a peerless jewel was this cathedral, more beautiful even than Notre Dame in Paris, more open to the light, more ethereal, more soaringly uplifted with its columns like long reeds surprisingly fragile considering the weight they bear, a miracle of the religious art of France, a masterpiece which the faith of our ancestors had called into being in all its mystic purity. PIERRE LOTI. THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION The controller, as he is called on the Siberian railroad, was passing through the cars to see that every passenger had a ticket. He did not notice the _mooshik_, which is what the Russian peasant is called in his own language, hiding under one of the car seats with a large bundle in front of him; or if he saw him, he passed on without seeming to have done so.