The Germans of course did not attempt to make a distinction between objects and documents in their threat to Italy, or in their destructive policy in France and Belgium. Public libraries were necessarily endangered by the menace to public museums, galleries, and buildings; and the attack therefore was openly made upon the national archives themselves, both in their documentary and their material form. The cranks of the Futurist movement desired to annihilate historical records because they considered them to be of no value to human progress: the Germans were willing to obliterate these records because they considered them to be of less value than the temporary operations of their armies. There is very little difference between the two points of view. Any person of intelligence will quickly recognise that the mind which looks with complacency upon the destruction of a part of the world’s archives will regard with equanimity the destruction of the entire record of man’s past activities. Ancient buildings, objects and documents are not so numerous that the loss of a few specimens can pass unnoticed; but even if the number were unlimited the crime of the destruction of some of that number would not be [Illustration: A human-faced lion, probably dating from the reign of Pharaoh Amenemes III., B.C. 1825. One of the great masterpieces of ancient Egyptian art. Now in Cairo] diminished. A thief who steals a handy hundred pounds from a public fund is not less culpable because he leaves untouched the bulk of the capital sum, which happens to be out of his reach. This aspect of the matter thus resolves itself into a question whether a knowledge of history is of any practical value to the man of the present day, or whether it is merely a hindrance to the progress of his original thought. The Futurist definitely accepts the latter view. “Would you poison yourselves,” says his Manifesto, “by a knowledge of history? Do you want to decay? Would you waste your strength by a useless admiration of the past, from which you can but emerge exhausted, reduced, downtrodden?”