The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-08-24
Entire Populations Contributed Time
and Labor to Ancient Glories of
France, Whose Ruins Serve to
Make Teutonic Vandalism an
Undying Memory-Secrets
of Stained Glass Lost
PROTECTION OF
AT AmlEkS.
BY STERLING HELLO.

calculation for that of Chartres-the
more free from prejudice and exagger-
alton as being the estimate Of a sister
cathedral, calculated at an epoch
when nobody dreamed 1t possible that
a nation at war could have the
scientific barbarism to shell and plant
dynamite charges in the most sacred
monuments of their neighbors. Rheims
cost, probably, as much as Chartres. If
not more. And the architects of 1910
estimated that If Charities Cathedral
had to be built in their time 1t would
cost $25,000,000. At present value Of
material mad skilled labor the esti-
mate would be nearer s75,000.000.
Now IL is known as matter OF his
tory that so great cathedrals and 500
abbey churches were constructed in
France between the years 1850 and
1870. This is something which modern
Germany has not been able to forgive
her neighbor-the possession of so
many ancient glories. And France
loves them more than she knew her
self. How did she get them? The
Able Bulteau. in his monograph, esti-
mated that had the work and material
the Middle Ages, the capital accumu-
| lated in those ninety years between
1880 and 1870 would represent $1,000
| 100000. Reducing such figures to
swollen modern values defies the
imagination. Then talk about ire
building" a cathedral.
They cost equally in time. Anony-
nous work of whole populations, their
! erection often required hundreds of
| years. The cathedrals of Bayonne
! Meaux, Troyes and Auxerre, COM
menced in the twelfth century, were
finished only in the sixteenth. Al
Rodez the work continued from 1871
to 1850. leaving unfinished to this day
the grandiose west towers.
How Germans Mined Towers.
The Germans knew all this wher
they mined the pillars at Laon and st
| Quentin. Every tourist will be shown
the deep rectangular cavities, bis
enough to hide a child, which they
laboriously chiselled in the major sup.
ports all ready to receive sufficient
charges OF dynamite or trinitrotoluo
to blow out the walls, bring down the
massive stone roofs and reduce these
two cathedrals TO mere stone heaps
For 1t is the pillars only which sup,
port the everlasting stone roofs; the
walls are nothing for support-mert
frames for glorious stained glass win.
.dows, lacework in carved stone ant
"mosaics of light"
The Germans knew that It would b.
impossible to replace the stained glass
itself, because the secret of certain
colors has been lost. They are pic
tured Bible stories, and have seeI
our boys by the hundred seated, drink
ing in their beauty and their story
as Ella Wheeler Wilcox, once seeing
them with me. wrote of the bunch;
oh. land of France, dear motherland,
The source of beauty and OF art
We see through rainbow tints of tears,
Thy glory of a thousand years!
I have heard the boys just ours
outside of ruined Rheims Cathedral oil
their knees among the fallen capitals
grubbing up the bits of preciou
stained glass in the heaps of powdere,
stone and mortar The boys take hom
these scraps OF "petrified color"-deel
sky blue, ruby red and the peculia
golden green of Rheims (alas, NJ
more!) ito set in rings and pins. TIL
true old glass is rotten" l. e., yer,
delicate. from exposure to wind an
weather for 900 years; but what