The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1915-06-07
LOUVAINE BELGIUM
A MONUMENTAL WRECK
(By Associated Pressl

an unusual harvest and Transform
all Belgium from the scene of desc
lat1on that has been often pictured
since the beginning of the war, Lou
vain still stands as a monumental
wreck. Little of it's former life ha.
crept back into its streets and the
! walls of practically all of it's build
ings are still crumbling ruins that
have been removed and apparently
Will not be. Here and there a wood
en- shack has been erected by some
enterprising vendor. of tobacco OF
post cards, but as a city it is still
uninhabitable.
Yet Louvain is not entirely dead,
and in one most important particu-
lar work of renovation is going on
apace-the renovation and restitu-
ton of its wonderful cathedral,
which escaped complete destruction
only by seeming miracle. The
church now is in the hands of a
score of workmen who are pains
takingly restoring those portions of
the walls which are shaky or dam
aged, the little panes of glass-.not
stained glass-which were blown
out by bomb explosions, and the al
tar which was burned by shell that
caught fire after it tore through the
roof above.
Competent architects who have
visited the cathedral say that it has
been in no way weakened by the ter
rible Smelling that destroyd the rest
of Louvain, and claims that with a
very little money it can be put back
into the shape in which it was be-
fore the war. The beautiful stained
glass in the windows to the rear of
the altar is absolutely unchanged.
The altar picture was removed be-
fore the shell came which tore open
the roof, and the majority of the
works of art and other valuables in
the building are now safely stored in
the basement of the Hotel de Vile
across the way-almost the only
other structure in Louvain that was
not razed.
Ut is conceivably only Louvain's
total demolition that has prevented
efforts to rebuild it, for that has
been accomplished in many other of
the Belgian cities that were wreck
ed by the Germans as they advanced
toward France 1t has been accom-
plished so completely in some cases
that the ignorant visitor would
never know there had been any war
in the little country.
This is true of Namur, to the
southwark. Namur played con-
spicuous part in the early days of
the war, and by no means escaped
without damage yet little of it is in
evidence today, particularly among
the forts that were held to be irwin
cibe, and that today probably are so.
Standing high above the River
Mouse, these forts present an alb
solutely unbroken and unchanged
appearance. Where the great shells
burst in the masonry one can only
guess at, for the holes are gone only
the hotel at the very top of the hill
on which the Notifications are built
ia still in a state Of ruin.
In this hotel, so goes the story
that many maintain is fairy tale,
there was the telephone central into
which ran the wires from all the
forts. The Germans, advancing, are
supposed to have learned of this VI
tai fact, and to have trained their
guns effectively on this building
first of all, SO that the connecting
lines were cut and no one fort had
any means of communication with
any other.
The German officers in Namur to-
day smile as they tell the story and
shake their heads. They admit that
it is quite possible that the Germans
should have learned the secret of the
position of Central" and also that
the aim of the guns might have been
accurate enough to destroy the
building, but they cannot quite be-
lieve that the Belgians could have
made so grave a military mistake as
to expose their lines of communica-
tion, and prefer to think that the
hotel was burned in incendiary fash
ion and the loss blamed onto the in
vaders.
In the country portions of Bel
GUM today there is scarcely a trace |
of war beyond an occasional ruined |
building. AS in Northern France,
the landscape is infinitely more at
tractive than OF old because the ex-
tensEe culture of sugar beets, with
their brown growth, has been dis
and wheat and corn, with
green shoots, have been substituted.
The destruction in Belgium may
have been overestimated and exag-
gerated in the beginning Whether
that or not, the combination of the
efforts of the victors
and invaders, and the forces of ma
ture in the springtime have made
Of it once more a pleasantly smiling