Just what ruin lies behind this dropped curtain is uncertain. It has been reported that Soissons is in ashes, burned and sacked in revenge for the failure of the Verdun attack. At any rate its inhabitants are confined within the limits of the town, and it is understood that they are compelled to toil unceasingly for the invaders. The vast farmsteads and fields are understood to be worked to the utmost by the townspeople in regular "gangs" under the eyes of German officers, and that the crops have been regularly gathered and distributed under the remarkable system for which the Germans are noted. Other than these no details have been allowed to creep forth from this unfortunate town. That this sanctuary of architecture may perchance escape entire destruction at the hands of these barbarians is not too much to hope for, but that the Cathedral should be spared is inconceivable, when one remembers the fate of Rheims, Ypres, Louvain, Arras, Malines and Noyon, to mention but a few of the incomparable treasures that have vanished before their onslaught. Soissons' magnificent monuments are now probably heaps of calcined stone and charred beams. Those marvels of painted glass will live henceforth only in the memory of those whose good fortune it was to have seen and valued them. As I write this the Cathedral of Lâon is reported to be a wreck, and is thus added to the list. Words fail me. These "murdered cities" are glorified forever more.... How one's imagination responds to their very names: Verdun, Amiens, Soissons, Rheims, Arras, Valenciennes!--and those others of Flanders: Bruges, Ghent, Louvain, Malines, Lille and Ypres--how full are these of grace and fancy. What ring of shield!--What clang of arms! For forty years these towns have enjoyed peace and fancied security, while that once great power, with hypocritical words of good will towards all men, even while sending delegates to the conferences at The Hague, was deliberately planning the destruction of sleeping nations whose lands are now invaded; whose young manhood is disappearing in a storm of blood and iron; whose architectural treasures are now but smoldering heaps of ashes! Rheims Cathedral, it is urged, was a landmark; a menace to the invader;--and this is true. It was a landmark, most certainly, and therefore it was a menace to the army of the invader, and was destroyed. This fact established, there followed the destruction of the other cathedrals, and it may be that before the invader is beaten off and pushed back over his own boundary line, those other great works of art still untouched will vanish under the rain of fire and shell--and none remain.