The city was three times bombarded. Unlike Termonde, it is open and without the least trace of fortification. None of the bombardments achieved any military object. No attempt was made to capture, fire, shell, or in any way diminish in efficiency the State railway works. I fear that the case looks complete. The Germans deliberately broke through the laws of civilised war, and, just as deliberately, broke through the walls of the cathedral. To describe in detail, and to put an estimate on the damage done, is a task for experts with ample time at their command. The Belgian Commission were to open a formal enquiry on the day following my visit, and kindly invited me to accompany them, but it was impossible. The following invoice of Hunnery is, therefore, only provisional. There is not a whole pane of glass left in the cathedral. The middle lateral window on the assailed flank of the edifice was itself struck; the others were shattered by the detonation. The stained glass is, I believe, modern, but as you saw it lying heaped on the pavement, like the shards of a rainbow, it looked beautiful enough to have been spared. A great gulf has been torn through the groined roof near its junction with the tower. The tower itself is blotched here and there a pallid white by the exploding shells. The great clock, the largest in Belgium, had been also struck, and its hands flapped in the wind like torn ribbons. The famous carillon, or peal of bells, does not, however, seem to have been injured. In the left aisle the charred remnant of a canvas still hung in its frame, but what the picture was no one could tell me. The pavement itself was torn up here and there like ground uprooted by swine. The equestrian monument near the southerly entrance has, as to the horse, suffered decapitation, and the figure has lost an arm. Fragments chipped off mouldings and capitals lie about in desolate heaps. And to complete the desolation, all the precious objects have been removed from the cathedral as from the other churches and public buildings. The ciboria, the chalices, the candlesticks, the rich orphreyed vestments have been removed to Antwerp. Thither have gone Van Dyck’s “Crucifixion,” and Rubens’s “Miraculous Draught of Fishes.” In its own way the most bizarre inhibition imposed by the war is that which prevents you from seeing a Rubens in Antwerp. They are all hidden away from the cultured burglars of Berlin. The “carnal ideal,” which Verhaeren discovers behind the great strokes of his spiritual ancestor would, it is feared, prove irresistible to Attila.