A long, low profile, with a lump to one side,
means the field-gun and its attendant ammunition-case; a
circle and slot stand for an observation-post; the trench is a
bent line, studded with vertical plumes of explosion; the
great guns of position, coming and going on their motors,
repeat themselves as scarabs; and man himself is a small blue
smudge, no larger than a foresight, crawling and creeping or
watching and running among all these terrific symbols.
TRAGEDY OF RHEIMS
But there is no hieroglyphic for Rheims, no blunting of the
mind at the abominations committed on the cathedral there.
The thing peers upward, maimed and blinded, from out of the
utter wreckage of the Archbishop's palace on the one side and
dust-heaps of crumbled houses on the other. They shelled, as
they still shell it, with high explosives and with incendiary
shells, so that the statues and the stonework in places are
burned the colour of raw flesh. The gargoyles are smashed;
statues, crockets, and spires tumbled; walls split and torn;
windows thrust out and tracery obliterated. Wherever one
looks at the tortured pile there is mutilation and defilement,
and yet it had never more of a soul than it has to-day.
Inside--("Cover yourselves, gentlemen," said the sacristan,
"this place is no longer consecrated")--everything is swept
clear or burned out from end to end, except two candlesticks
in front of the niche where Joan of Arc's image used to stand.
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