This attitude towards the relics of bygone days is not usually defined by us. It is a sense so rooted in our minds that we have felt no need to find for it a reasoned explanation. But, since our late enemies, in the excitement of warfare, widely and openly preached a doctrine of destruction which we had believed to be held only by a few madmen of the Futurist sect, it is necessary for us to inquire into the unconsidered arguments upon which our sentiments in this regard are based. What, then, is the value of an ancient work of art? Why do we feel that buildings or objects of this kind are entitled to respect no matter how fierce the international struggle which surges around them? Let us search for an answer to these questions in order that the attitude dictated to us by intuitive sentiment may be justified by some process of definite thought. Here in the following pages are briefly outlined the main arguments which have presented themselves to the mind of one whose business for several years it has been to safeguard the treasures of the past from thoughtless or intentional damage, and who, in the stress of that labour, has often searched for the foundations of the instinctive desire to preserve intact to future generations the ancient glories of an alien race. “Long memories make great peoples,” said Montalembert, and it is largely for this reason that the preservation of antiquities is desirable. Antiquities, whether they be works of art or objects of archæological interest, are the illustrations in the book of history, by means of which we are able to visualise the activities of past ages. The buildings and objects created by any period in a nation’s existence have a value more or less equal to the written records of that age. On the one hand the documentary records sometimes tell us of matters upon which structural or artistic relics throw no light; and on the other hand monuments and objects often give information to us which no written word could convey. Antiquities and histories are inseparable. The one kind of record supplements the other; and it is as difficult to read history aright without the aid of these tangible illustrations as it would be to study Euclid without linear diagrams. Thus to destroy antiquities is to destroy history.