In this edifice is symbolised all that civilisation of ours that culminated in the Twentieth Century, now to be razed to the ground. For lo, these seven hundred years, even as the two great towers above us have lifted the infinite beauty of their architectural lace-work against the blue-domed sky, some thirty generations of the human soul have sent their aspirations heavenward on the incense of prayer. Over these very stones beneath our feet, king after king of France has walked, to receive the crown of Charlemagne and to be anointed before this altar from “_le sainte ampouli_.” And now here to-day is history in no dead and musty pages but in the making, white-hot from the anvil of the hour! Only a little over a mile away are the German guns that from day to day shower the shell-fire of their destruction on the city. This spot upon which we stand is their particular objective point of attack. Hear! There is a rumbling detonation. We wait hushed for an instant. But the sound is not repeated. You see, already there have been some 30,000 shells poured on Rheims. Twelve hundred fell in one day only. At any moment there may be more. “If the bombardment should begin,” we had been instructed at Maison de la Presse, “you would rush for the nearest cellar.” I think we all have listening ears. Every little while there is certainly repeated that desultory firing on the front. But nothing is dropping on us. And reassured, we turn to examine the great shell hole in the pavement not five yards distant. The Archbishop’s Palace, immediately adjoining the church, is flat on the ground in ruins. The cathedral itself is slowly being wrecked. But in the public square directly before it, look here! See Joan of Arc on her horse triumphantly facing the future! In her hand she is waving the bright flag of France. Amid the débris of the great war piling up about her, the famous statue stands absolutely untouched. Here at the very storm centre of the attack on civilisation, with the hell-fire of the enemy falling in a rain of thousands of shells about her, she seems as secure, as safe under God’s heaven as when the people passed daily before her to prayer. Shall we not call it a miracle? “See,” says the captain, his head reverently uncovered, his eyes shining, “our Maid of Orleans. No German shall ever harm her!” And since the war began, it is true, no German ever has. Not a statue of the famous girl-warrior anywhere in France has been so much as scratched by the enemy. Her name was the password on the day of the Battle of the Marne and there are those who think it was the shadowy figure of a girl on a horse that led the troops to that victory. Oh, though cathedrals may crumble and cities be laid waste and fields be devastated, some time again it shall be well with the world. For the faith of the people of France in Joan of Arc shall never pass away.