The Cordova daily times., 1915-06-26
BELGIUM VIEWED AFTER MONTHS
 IF WAR


 1 an unusual harvest and transform all Belgium from the scene of desolatlon beginning of the war, Louvain still stands as a monumental wreck. Little of It's former life has crept back into Its streets and the walls of practically all of its buildings are still crumbling ruins that have not been removed and apparently will not be. Here and there a wooden shack has been erected by some enterprlsing vendor of tobacco | or post cards, but as a city 1t Is still unlnhabitable.
 Yet Louvain Is not entirely dead and In one most important particular work of renovation Is going on apace the renovation and restitution of It's wonderful cathedral, which escaped complete destruction only by a seem. ing miracle. The church now is in the hands of a score of workmen who are painstakingly restoring those DOT tions of the walls which are shaky or damaged, the little panes of glass-not stained glass-which were blown out by bomb explosions, and the altar which was burned by shell that caught fire after 1t tore through the roof above.
 Competent architects who have visited the cathedral say that 1t has been in no way weakened by the ter rible smelling that destroyed the rest of Louyain, and claim that with a very little money 1t can be put back into the shape in which it was before the war. The beautiful stained glass in the windows to the rear of the altar Is absolutely undamaged. The altar picture was removed before 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 Louyain that was not razed.
 It is conceivably only Louyain's total demolition that has prevented efforts to rebuild 1t, for that has been accomplished In many other of the Belgian cities that were wrecked by the Germans as they advanced toward France. It has been accomplished 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 south. ward. Namur played a conspicuous part in the early days Of the war, and by no means escaped without damage yet little of 1t Is in evidence today particularly among the forts that were held to be invincible, and that today probably are so. Standing high above the River Mouse, thes eforts present an absolutely unbroken and undam aged 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 Is still in state of ruinl.
 In this hotel, so goes the story that many maintain Is a fairy talk, there was the telephone central into which ran the wires from all the forts. The Germans, advancing, are supposed to have learned of this vital 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 communion tion with any other.
 The German officers in Namur today smile as they tell the story and shake their heads. They admit that 1t is quite possible that the Germans should have learned the secret of the posi- tion of Central" and also that the aim Of the guns might have been accurate enough to destroy the building, but they cannot quite believe that the Belgians could have made so grave a military mistake as to expose their lines of communication and prefer to think that the hotel was burned in ineendiary fashion and the loss blamed on the invaders.
 In the country portions of Belgium today there Is scarcely a trace of war beyond an occasional ruined building. And in Northern France, the landscape is infinitely more attractive than of old because the extensive culture of sugar beets. with their brown growth, has been discontinued, and wheat and corn, with green shoots. have been