Richard Harding Davis

New York Tribune/September 22, 1914

Paris, Sept. 19. In several ways the city of Rheims is celebrated. Some know her only through her Cathedral, where were crowned all but six of the Kings of France, and where the stained glass windows, with those in the cathedrals of Chartres and Burgos, Spain, arc the most beautiful in all the world. Children know Rheims through the wicked magpie which the Archbishop excommunicated; and to their elders, if they are rich, Rheims is the place from which comes all their champagne.

On September 4 the Germans entered Rheims and occupied it until the 17th, when they retreated to the hill north of the city, without fighting. But the day before yesterday the French forces, having entered Rheims, the Germans bombarded the city with field guns and howitzers.

Rheims is fifty-six miles from Paris, but though I started at an early hour, so many bridges have been blown up that I did not reach Rheims until 3 o’clock in the afternoon. At that hour the French artillery, to the east at Nogent and immediately outside the northern edge of the town, were firing on the German positions and the Germans were replying, many of their shells falling in the heart of the city.

Damage is Called Intentional

The proportion of those that struck the Cathedral or houses within a hundred yards of it to those falling on other buildings was about six to one. So what damage the Cathedral suffered was from blows delivered not by accident, but with intent. As the priests put it, firing on the church was “expres” (of set purpose).

The Cathedral dominates not only the city, but the countryside. It rises from the plain as Gibraltar rises from the sea, as the pyramids rise from the desert. And at a distance of six miles, as you approach from Paris along the Valley of the Marne, it has more the appearance of a fortress than a church. But when you stand in the square beneath and look up, it is entirely ecclesiastic, of noble and magnificent proportions, in design inspired, much too sublime for the king it has crowned, and almost worthy of the king in whose honor seven hundred years ago it was reared. It has been called “perhaps the most beautiful structure produced in the Middle Ages.”

On the facade rising tier upon tier are 560 statues and carvings. The statues are of angels, martyrs, patriarchs, heretics, the vices and virtues, the Virgin and Child. In the center of these is the famous rose window; on either side giant towers.

At my feet down the steps leading to the three portals were pools of blood. There was a priest in the square, a young man with white hair and with a face as strong as one of those of the saints carved in stone, and as gentle. He was curé doyen of the Cathedral, Canon Frezet, and he explained the pools of blood. Before they retreated the Germans had carried their wounded up the steps into the nave of thc Cathedral, had spread straw upon the stone flagging, placed with it a bucket of water and a raw shoulder of beef and abandoned to the care of the enemy those
unfortunates who had become a burden. In this procedure there was nothing exceptional. During this last week of retreat it has been their rule. Along the twenty miles of their withdrawal the wake of the Germans is strewn with these derelicts, no longer able to help them, no longer able to help themselves.

The curé guided me to the side door, unlocked it and led the way into the Cathedral. It is built in the form of a crucifix, and so vast is the edifice that many chapels arc lost in it and the lower half is in a shadow. But from high above the stained windows of the thirteenth century, or what was left of them, was cast a glow so gorgeous, so wonderful, so pure, that it seemed to come direct from the other world.

German Shell Kills German Wounded

From north and south the windows shed a radiance of deep blue, like the blue of the sky by moonlight on the coldest night of winter, and from the west the the great rose window glowed with the warmth and beauty of a thousand rubies. Beneath it, bathed in crimson light, where for generations French men and women have knelt in prayer, where Joan of Arc helped place the crown on Charles VII, was piled three feet of dirty straw, and on the straw were gray-coated Germans, covered with the mud of the fields, caked with blood, white and haggard from the loss of it, from the lack of sleep, rest and food. The entire west end of the Cathedral looked like a stable, and in the blue and purple rays from the gorgeous windows the wounded were as unreal as ghosts. Already two of them had passed into the world of ghosts. They had not died from their wounds, but from a shell sent by their own people.

It had come screaming into this backwater of war and tearing out leaded window-pane as you would destroy cobwebs, and had burst among those who already had paid the penalty. And so two of them, done with pack drill, goose step, half rations and forced marches, lay under straw the priests had heaped upon them. The toes of their boots pointed grotesquely upward. Their gray hands were clasped rigidly as though in prayer.

Fate of German Soldiers

Half hidden in the straw, the others were as silent and almost as still. Sincc they had been dropped upon the stone floor they had not moved, but lay in twisted, unnatural attitudes. Only their eyes showed that they lived. These were turned beseechingly upon the French Red Cross doctors, kneeling waist high in straw and unreeling long white bandages. The wounded watched them drawing slowly nearer, fighting off death until they came, clinging to life as shipwrecked sailors cling to a raft and watch boats pulling toward them.

A young German officer, his smart cavalry cloak torn and slashed and filthy with dried mud and blood, and with his eyes in bandages, groped toward the pail of water, feeling his way with his boot, his arms stretched out clutching the air. To guide him a priest took his arm, and the officer turned and tumbled against him. Thinking the priest was one of his own men, he swore at him, and then to learn if he wore shoulder straps ran

his fingers over the priest’s shoulders, and, finding a silk cassock, said quickly in French: “Pardon me, my father; I am blind.”

The Archbishop of Rheims was at Rome electing a new Pope, and in his absence the young curé resident with the white hair was in charge. As he guided me through the wrecked Cathedral his indignation and his fear of being unjust waged a fine battle. “Every summer,” he said, “thousands of your fellow countrymen visit the Cathedral. They come again and again. They love these beautiful windows. They will not permit them to be destroyed. Will you tell them what you saw?”

Wreckage in the Cathedral

It is no pleasure to tell what I saw. Shells had torn out some of the windows, the entire sash, glass and stone frame—all was gone; only a jagged hole was left. On the floor lay broken carvings, pieces of stone from flying buttresses outside that had been hurled through the embrasures, tangled masses of leaden window sashes, like twisted coils of barbed wire, and great brass candelabra. The steel ropes that supported them had been shot away, and they had plunged to the flagging below, carrying with them their scarlet silk tassels, heavy with the dust of centuries. And everywhere was broken glass. Not one of the famous blue windows was intact. None had been totally destroyed, but each had been shattered. and through the apertures the sun blazed blatantly.

We walked upon glass more precious than precious stones It was beyond price. No one can replace it. Seven hundred years ago the secret of the glass died. Diamonds can be bought anywhere, pearls can be matched, but not the stained glass of Rheims. And under our feet, with straw and caked blood, it lay crushed into tiny fragments. When you held a piece of it between your eye and the sun it glowed with a light that never was on land or sea.

War is only waste. The German Emperor thinks it is thousands of men in flashing breastplates at manoeuvres, galloping past him, shouting “Hoch der Kaiser!” That is all of war that he has ever seen. I have seen a lot of it, and real war is his highborn officer with his eyes shot out, his peasant soldiers with their toes sticking stiffly through the straw, and the windows of Rheims, that for centuries with their beauty have glorified the Lord, swept into a dust heap.

Outside the Cathedral I found the bombardment of the city was still going forward with spirit and that the French batteries to the north and east were answering gun for gun. How people will act under unusual conditions no one can guess. Many of the citizens of Rheims were abandoning their homes and running through the streets leading west, trembling, weeping, incoherent with terror, carrying nothing with them. Others were continuing the routine of life with anxious, nervous faces, but making no other sign. The great majority had moved to the west of the city to the Paris gate and lined the road for miles, but had taken little or nothing with them, apparently intending to return at nightfall. They were all of the poorer class. The houses of the rich were closed, as were all the shops, except a few cafes and those that offered for sale bread, meat and medicine.

During yesterday morning the bombardment destroyed many houses. One to each block was the average, except around the Cathedral, where two hotels that face it and the Palace of Justice had been pounded but not destroyed. Other shops and residences facing the Cathedral had been ripped open from roof to cellar. In one a fire was burning briskly and firemen were playing on it with hose. 1 was their only audience. A sight that at other times would have collected half of Rheims and blocked traffic in the excitement of the bombardment failed to attract. The Germans were using howitzers. Where shells hit in the street they tore up the Belgian blocks for a radius of five yards and made a hole as though a water main had burst. When they hit a house, that house had to be rebuilt. Before they struck it was possible to follow the direction of the shells by sound. It was like the jangling of many telegraph wires.

Effects of Bombardment

A hundred yards north of the Cathedral I saw a house hit at the third story. The roof was of gray slate, high and sloping, with tall chimneys. When the shell exploded the roof and chimneys disappeared. You did not see them sink and tumble; they merely vanished. They had been part of the skyline of Rheims. then a shell removed them and another roof fifteen feet lower down became the skyline.

I walked to the edge of the city, to the northeast, but at the outskirts all the streets were barricaded with carts and paving stones, and when I wanted to pass forward to the French batteries the officers in charge of the barricades refused permission. At this end of the town, held in reserve in case of a German advance, the streets were packed with infantry. The men were going from shop to shop trying to find one the Germans had not emptied. Tobacco was what they sought.

They told me they had been all the way to Belgium and back, but I never have seen them more fit. Where Germans are haggard and show need of food and sleep, the French were hard and moved quickly and were smiling.

One reason for this is that even if the commissariat is slow they are fed by their own people, and when in Belgium by the Allies. But when the German pass the people hide everything eatable, and bold the doors and windows. And so when the German supply wagons fail to come up the men starve.

I went in search of the American Consul, William Bardel. Everybody seemed to know him and all men spoke well of him. They liked him because he stuck to his post, but the Mayor had sent for him and 1 could find neither him nor the Mayor.

When I left the Cathedral I had told my chauffeur to wait near it, not believing the Germans would continue to make it their point of attack. He waited until two houses within a hundred yards of him were knocked down, and then went away from there leaving word with the sentry that I could find him outside the gate to Paris. When 1 found him he was well outside and refused to return, saying he would sleep in his car.

The Knitting Women

On the way bark I met a steady stream of women and old men fleeing before the shells. Their state was very pitiful. Some of them seemed quite dazed with fear and ran dodging from one sidewalk to the other, and as shells burst over the city prayed aloud and crossed themselves. Others were busy behind the counters of their shops serving customers, and others stood in doorways holding in their hands their knitting. Frenchwomen of a certain class always knit. If they were waiting to be electrocuted they would continue knitting.

The bombardment had grown sharper and the rumble of guns was uninterrupted, growling like thunder after a summer storm or shrieking as the shells passed to burst with jarring detonations. Under foot the pavements were inch-deep with falling glass, and as you walked it tinkled musically. With inborn sense of order some of the housewives abandoned their knitting and calmly swept up the glass into neat piles. Habit is often so much stronger than fear. So is curiosity. All the boys and many young men and maidens were in the middle of the street watching to see where the shells struck and on the lookout for aeroplanes. When, about 5 o’clock, one sailed over the city, no one knew whether it was German or French, but every one followed it, apparently intending if it dropped a bomb to be in at the death.

I found all the hotels closed, and on their doors I pounded in vain, and was planning to go back to my car when 1 was directed to the Hotel du Nord. It was open, and the proprietress, who was knitting, told me the table d’hote dinner was ready. Not wishing to miss dinner, I halted an aged citizen who was fleeing from the city and asked him to carry a note to the American Consul, inviting him to dinner. But the aged man said the consulate was close to the cathedral, and that to approach it was as much as his life was worth. I asked him how much his life was
worth in money, and he said two francs.

He did not find the consul, and I shared the table d’hote with three tearful old French ladies, each of whom had husband or son at the front. That would seem to have been enough, without being shelled at home. It is a commonplace, but it is nevertheless true, that in war it is the women who suffer. The proprietress walked around the table, still knitting, and told us tales of German officers who, until the day before, had occupied her hotel, and her anecdotes were not intended to make German officers popular. Being at Rheims, I felt confident I would be served with the best champagne in existence, but it was quite the worst. And so another horror was added to war. The bombardment ceased at 8 o’clock, but at 4 this morning it woke me, and as I departed for Paris salvos of French artillery were returning the German fire.

Before leaving I revisited the cathedral to see it during the night it had been further mutilated. Shells were still falling around it, and the square in front was deserted. In the falling rain the roofless houses, shattered windows and broken carvings that littered the street presented a picture of melancholy and useless desolation. Around three sides of the square not a building was intact. But facing the wreckage the bronze statue of Joan of Arc sat on her bronze charger, uninjured and untouched. In her right hand, lifted high above her. as though defying the German shells, some one overnight had lashed the flag of France.