New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-03-22
Running Even Ruins
The asst Word Of German Vandalism
in Northern France
To tho Editor Of The Tribune.

To the Editor Of The Tribune.
Sir: In the midst Of the horrors marking
the German retreat In France it Is difficult
to give much thought to the loss OF works OF
art. One thinks of the pitiful young girls
Of Noyon. taken into God knows what vile
ness Of captivity. One thinks Of the field
deliberately destroyed. tho fruit trees hacked
20 pieces. the wells poisoned. We may know
the trail Of the beast by the signs It yields CT
his ingenuity In defling ell innocent human
things. Like some monstrous ebbing tide he
leaves behind him an unspeakable stencil.
And our sympathy must be all for the men
and women upon whom he has inflicted suf-
fcring with such utterly gratuitous malice.
Blu; one cannot forget, either, those other
elements in the picture which speak Of HE
Unborn hatred for beauty, for the monuments
Of the past whose sole function in the present
has been TO kndle the imaginations- of men.
In the dispatches printed in this mornings
paper it is stated that French aviators re-
port the destruction by the Germans of the
historic ruins of Coucy-le- Chateau. The ruin,
even, of ruins, mark you. 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. If in his course of pillage he can
not take piano with him ne deflss it. All
articles of furniture that are not conveniently
movable he smashes. Correspondents with
the Allies now following the retreat speak not
only of libraries Quilted, but of books torn to
bits as though the Huns found a species of
revenge in thus dshonoring the most harm
less of all the possessions Of the owners they
could not, perchance, kill. And on top of all
this comes Coucy.
1t has been called the chef-d'euvre OF
French military architecture in the Middle
Ages. Vollet-le-Duc, who had charge of its
restoration when it was made a national
monument in 1856, used to say that the
donjon made the largest towers in the world
look like spindles. Carcassonne, | suppose, is
more romantically picturesque, but Coucy
was incomparably majestic. The motto 81
Enguerrand III, the first builder of this CO.
lossal pile, has been much quoted, but
must quote it again:
Roi ne suis,
Ne prince, ne due, ne comte aussi,
Je suis lie sire de Coucy.
That proud boast was nobly borne by
house of warriors and crusaders who | dare
say did some savage things in their time
which stretched from the thirteenth century
TO the dawn of the ffteenth-but whose an
nails could not conceivably hold anything
akin to the conduct of the Germans to-day.
Their martial aims, at all events, long since
went down the wind. As fortress Coucy
was dsmantled as far back as 1862. II, as
the Hun might argue, it might still be OF
service to the Allies for purposes of defence,
it is also to be remembered that the strategic
position it occupies remains, and that tho
materials for defensive position are still
there. He has gained nothing by this dc
struction, nothing save the satisfaction OF a
destructive spirit.
They tell in England an apt story OF a
party Of German officers rescued from their
sinking ship by British conquerors. Well
said one of the captiyes to one of the latter,
81 suppose it is true that you English Will
always be fools, and that We Germans will
never be gentlemen" They never will be-
They never will eight clean" They never
will understand that in matters like Coucy
and Rheims they match their atrocities IN
the moral world by calous insult to the
things of the mind. Il. l.
New York, March 81, 1917.