New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1915-08-22
The Anniversary of Louvain.

A wear ago this week there was perpe-
trated one more Of those crimes, for'u-
natelv few in number, which live as last
ing expressions of the shame and degrade
ton of a party, people or Of an age II
one were 10 sum up in three words the
successive stages by which contemporary
German spirit revealed itself to an amazed
world. these words would be hege' Lou
vain and Lustania.
In the invasion Of Belgium, which came
to the world as an attack upon the city OIL
Iiage. there was disclosed the defiance OF
the written pledge, the denial Of the prom
Use and the violation Of the faith that man
kind had come to place in those treaties
agreements. conventions by which IN later
wears civilization has sought to circum-
scribe the field of slaughter and protect
the weak whose misfortune it is to lie
along the marches of the strong.
Yet in the early days, while the fiction
of successful Belgian resistance fingered
the world welcomed new heroism, and IN
perceiving in its own time repetition OF
the ancient glories that had survived IN
the adnjring records of mankind little
forgot the German assault upon the struct-
ure of international right
But with the crime of Louvain, when
from behind the sullen wall Of German
censorship there slowly crept forth into
the clear light the authentic reports OF
what had occurred in the ancient and
beautiful city Of Louvain, the whole civil
lied world took its first firm grip and sure
measure of the German phenomenon that
was now filling the planet
For in the sadie fury of the individual
soldier. which was revealed in the mutila-
ton of women and the rape Of children, IN
the ordered butchery Of those firing squads
and burial parties, in the calculated teroc'
itv of those incendiary platoons, there was
disclosed the ultimate application Of the
same principle, the same conception that
had sent the first attachments of Uhlans
across the Belgian frontier and reduced
10 scrap of paper" the sacred pledge OF
a whole nation.
Liege was violation of international
law. II WAS an assault upOli biO "AiN'N
fabric of international right; but Louvain
was the final proof that for the German
not international law alone, but the merest
fragment of common humanity had lost its
binding power. 1t was more than this; 1t
was the expression by the individual SOL
der, by the squad and by the platoon of
the doctrine which had been collectively
affirmed by the German statesmen in in
vading Belgium.
After Louvain the battering down of the
magnificent monument which was the
cathedral of Rheims left mankind cold.
The Kultur of the civilized hand and the
savage heart which took its fill of lust and
of revenge from the helpless women and
children of Louvan could not be expected
to stay its artillery when the muzzles were
pointed at one of the few and most pre-
cious monuments of bygone ages. A
little extension, a minor expansion Of the
whole Teutonic will and purpose, this was
to be found written in the crumbling walls
of the cathedral, which belonged neither
to France nor Europe, neither to the Mid
die Ages nor to the twentieth century,
but to the whole of mankind and to all
generations of the children Of men.
But Louvain was something apart from
all this. 1t was a proof final and perfect
that once the faith of nation and the law
OF all nations are set aside the descent to
barbarism is inevitable and not long to be
delayed. To tear up a convention signed
by the duly empowered ambassadors of a
people is not merely to end the reign Of an
abstract right To assail the liberty of a
weak but independent state is not an abb
stract thing; it does not stop with an ulti-
matum and pronunciamento. 1t is but
y the beginning Of murder. And if the next
step be the killing of the few armed and
uniformed forces of that state, that, too, is
but step.
Even now, when only twelve months
have passed, how feeble and how fugitive
sound the voices of the German defenders,
who would Justify the murders Of Louvain
by the assertion that from the houses men
fired upon the German soldiers! What
then were the German soldiers doing IN
Louvain? In the last expiring agony of a
brave people, the last scattering shots that
precede humiliation, was any resistance
too desperate TO be made? From of OLD
women as well as men have stood In the
ranks in the final hour, but it remained for
the Germans TO assert that such resistance
still delivered not alone the women but
the children over TO the fury of a victo-
rious million.
Out of the sodden ashes of LOuvain,
out of the very trenches into which Ger
man Kultur flung its hllings-men, women
and children-pell mol, there arose in