Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1919-01-27
WAR RUINS VIEWED
BY PRES. WILSON
Continued From Page One.)

Continued From Page One)
ice. There was constant panor-
ANA of destroyed or charred vine
yards, gardens and homes.
The president was welcomed at
Rheims by the mayor and a COM
mittee to whom Mr. Wilson explain
ed that he had not come to the
devastated regions sooner because
he had been wholly engaged at
Paris with the business of making
peace. Before going to the ca
thedraI, he passed through the
streets of the deserted city, which
was once the home of lis, 900 peo-
pie, but where less than 5000 are
now eking out an existence among
the ruins. He visited Red Cross
canteens where hundreds of desti-
tute persons are fed night and day
and the hospital where the sick and
injured are cared for. The cham
payne cellars beneath the city, SAID
to contain some 100000 bottles
of wine, were not visited.
A light blanket of snow covered
the ground as the president drove
up to the cathedral at Rheims, raw
ished and naked in all its misery
and desolation, looked like a grave
yard in the moonlight. There were
more crows in the air, circling over
the ruined town than were human
beings below in the litrered streets,
Cordinal Lucon, Archbishop of
Rheims, who stood steadfastly by
his charge for four years, during
5ah
without a German shell hurting
death into the city, met the preSi-
dent at the fence of rough boards,
which now excludes curiosity seek
ers and encIoses the rubbish into
which this most historic edifice has
been reduced. The cardinal con
Quoted Mr.. Wilson to the nave of
the cathedral, where in 1914 the
Germans during their short occupa-
ton of the city, placed their
wounded, and then, being forced to
evacuate, burned their men to
death by incendiary shells that fired
the roof, but did not damage the
vault.
Art Turned Into WreckaSe.
All over the tagging worn
smooth through the years by mil
lions of feet bringing Frenchmen
to devOtions, were piled heaps of
rubbish, remnants of statuary and
frescoes and fragments of columns
and sculptures which were account
ed the most perfect and complete
examples of Gothic art. AS the
president and the cardinal stood
together looking upward, while the
prelate briefly recOunted the story
of four years of constant destruc-
ton they looked straight through to
the clouded sky. The snow furry
was covering the bare ruins of the
city outside; also was laying blaR-
ket upon the inside of the cathed-
raj
The ~chalky stone of Champagne
of which the cathedral was built
is scaling off from the effects of
German fire and the falling snow
flakes were mixed with an almost
constant dropping of fragments.
He was shown where thousands
of shells thrown from German bat
teries on two sides burst among
the buttresses which support the
main structure and where forests
Of sculptures which ornament the
structure have been SCARED, nicked
and torn by fragments from the
big shells, but very few of which
ever reached the vault.
Wilson Given Part of Window.
Part of the vault, however, lies a
heap of twisted and crumpIed
wreckage upon the main altar
where it was thrown by explosions
which wrecked most of the stained
glass thirteenth century windows. /
Cardinal Lucon took Mr.. Wilson
outside and they picked their way
through rubbish heaps to a point, |
from which they could view the |
shell-riddled painting of the Last |
Judgment above the south door, the |
great Rose window, the statute of |
st. Anne and dozens of other works |
of art, OF which virtually none es-
capped AS they left the cathedral, |
the cardinal gave the president a |
stained glass panel from one Of the |
windows taken down in time to |
save It. The panel is unscarred. It |
is circular and about three feet in |
diameter. It shows a figure of the |
Savior done in many colored glass
of the early centuries.