AESCITIS qu hor fur veniet" (Ye know not in what hour the despoiler cometh) were the words of an inscription carved on the capstone of a church porch in the fifteenth century by a monkish stonecutter, overlooking a smiling valley in Picardy. That valley is now a waste place; its once populous and peaceful villages are in ruins; its fruitful orchards are gone; its murmuring streams have overflown their banks, choked with the debris of war. No church towers are visible, nor are there any forests left in the blasted expanse of shell-torn earth. The joy felt by the people of this ravaged land over the retreat of the invader, is turned to bitterness by the sight of so much wanton destruction, for they realize that this once peaceful smiling land, the richest region of France, is now a great desert waste strewn with ruins of the priceless records of her glorious achievements in the world of art. And this loss of these irreplaceable monuments is especially bitter to a people so attuned to beauty. With a contemptuous disregard for the accumulated animosity of the whole world, the Imperial high command seems bent upon leaving its hall mark upon the evacuated country. Acknowledging its inability to hold Rheims any longer, it retires its great guns to a locality from which it sends hundreds of shells crashing into that hapless town, and these are mainly aimed at the ruins of the great Cathedral. "The ruin even of ruins," cries a correspondent of the Tribune; adding, "In so many of the military transactions of the Hun you may perceive the hatred of humanity that actuates him, his longing to glut upon some personal victim the passion for destruction that is in his soul."

Philip Gibbs, perhaps the fairest and most moderate of war correspondents, in describing the retreat of March, 1917, deals with the aspect of the country beyond the tract of shell craters, the smashed barns and country houses and churches, the tattered tree trunks, and great belts of barbed wire: "Behind the trenches are two towns and villages in which they had their 'rest billets,' and it is in these places that one sees the spirit and temper of the men whom the British are fighting.

"All through this war I have tried to be fair and just to the Germans, to give them credit for their courage and to pity them because the terror of war has branded them as it has branded the British.

"But during these last days I have been sickened and saddened by the things I have seen, because they reveal cruelty which is beyond the inevitable villainy of war. They have spared nothing on the way of their retreat. They have destroyed every village in their abandonment with systematic and detailed destruction. Not only in (the towns of) Bapaume and PÉronne have they blown up or burned all the houses which were untouched by shell-fire, but in scores of villages they laid waste the cottages of poor peasants, and all their little farms, and all their orchards. At Bethonvillers, to name only one village out of many, I saw how each house was marked with a white cross before it was gutted with fire. The Cross of Christ was used to mark the work of the devil, for truly this has been the devil's work.

"Even if we grant that the destruction of houses in the wake of retreat is the recognized cruelty of war, there are other things which I have seen which are not pardonable, even of that damnable code of morality. In Baupaume and PÉronne, in Roye and NeslÉ and Lian-court, and all these places over a wide area the German soldiers not only blew out the fronts of houses, but with picks and axes smashed mirrors and furniture and even picture frames.... There is nothing left in these towns. Family portraits have been kicked into the dÉbris of the gutters. The black bonnets of old women who lived in these houses lie in the rubbish heaps, and by some strange pitiful freak these are almost the only signs left of the inhabitants who lived here before the soldiers wrecked their houses.

"The ruins of houses are pitiful to see when done deliberately even when shell-fire spared them in the war-zone, but worse than that is the ruin of women and children and living flesh.

"I saw that ruin to-day in Roye and NeslÉ. At first I was rejoiced to see how the inhabitants were liberated after being so long in hostile lines.... The women's faces were dead faces, shallow and mask-like and branded with the memories of great agonies. The children were white and thin, so thin that the cheek bones protruded, and many of them seemed to be idiot children. Hunger and fear had been with them too long."

This is the reverse of the pictures I found, during those calm and beautiful summer days of 1910, in that sunny and prosperous land. Pictures framed with quaint customs; the simple pleasures of fÊte days enjoyed by a happy and prosperous peasantry, all unmindful of the terrible days so soon to come upon them. "Nescitis qua hor fur veniet." How prophetic the warning words of that old monk inscribed upon the capstone of that little church overlooking the green plains of Picardy!

And now what is left in place of the gray old churches, the quiet monasteries, the fruitful farms and flocks and the dense forests? Where now shall we look for the gleaming white walls of the turreted chÂteaux, the precious mossy towers of mediaeval ruined castles; the somnolent quaint towns with wandering streets filled with timbered, carved and strangely gabled houses of half forgotten periods; the sleepy deserted market places over which towered architectural treasures of town halls famed throughout the world.

Where shall the artist seek the matchless chÂteaux gardens, which took centuries in the making? Where seek the still reaches of silent canals crossed here and there by arched stone bridges, all shaded by great trees casting cool shadows in midday, or the vast dim interiors of cathedrals marked with the skill of many ages,—filled with the aroma of incense, and the inspiration of centuries of prayer?

"The old order changeth, giving place to new."

But at least one may be thankful now to have been privileged to know and to have seen these wonderful and beautiful remains of that "old order." And this feeling of gratitude tempers somewhat one's fury at the result of this invasion and destruction. But one would not have these sacred remains disturbed; there must be no attempt at restoration of these matchless monuments, at the hands of well-meaning municipalities. Rheims, Arras, Soissons, LÂon, must be left mainly as they now lie prostrate, lasting memorials for future ages.

Leave to Dame Nature the task of draping them with green clinging vines, and embossings of velvet moss. So let them remain in their solemn majesty, monuments to the failure of an imperial order unhampered by the love of mankind or the fear of God.

THE END