Not only in Cologne, but throughout the whole of Germany, the completion of the cathedral was a signal for an outburst of pride and joy. National enthusiasm knew no bounds. There were festivals and feastings and pageants. Looking back on the rejoicings from our own standpoint of a stricken world, we can recognise of what tragic events they were the starting point. To keep a cool head when steering on a full tide of success is a test of character more severe in its searching than the patient bearing of adversity. Under that test the new-made German Empire broke down rapidly. By 1880 Germany was launched on the career which, soon transcending all that is legitimate in national virility and self-consciousness, was to bring her ultimately, through pride and aggression, to defeat and downfall. From the cannon captured in the French war a bell known as the Kaiser-Glocke was cast, which became in a special sense the tutelary genius of the cathedral. Only on rare and solemn occasions was the Kaiser-Glocke heard. Then as its deep note boomed across the waters of the Rhine, the citizens of Cologne thrilled with proud memories of conquest and restored national life. The cannon of a conquered foe are symbols of death, destruction, and defeat. To convert them as trophies of victory into bells which call men and women to the service of God and the worship of the Prince of Peace, is an act of paganism removed as by the poles from rudimentary Christian ethic. But though the mills of God grind slowly they grind exceeding small, as the fate of the great bell was to prove. In the spring of 1918, owing to the acute shortage of metal, the Kaiser-Glocke shared the doom of many other of the fine Cologne church bells. To-day its great chamber stands bare and empty. The people of the town were in despair. The passing of the bell was to them a symbol of the passing of victory. But the grim needs of the hour in the matter of munitions had to be met at any cost. Born of the things of death, to the things of death the bell returned. Reconverted into a gun, and lost on the Western Front--was ever warning more sombre as to the vanity of human desires and the perils which wait on human arrogance?