The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-06-05

ed the brothers fame and had been appointed "Peintre ct valet de cham bre' to John of Bavaria, Prince of Liege. He lived three years at Lille became ambassador to Portugal, and there painted the portrait of the In fanta Isabella His mission was deli cate. IL was his task to seek the hand of the Infanta Isabella for the Duke of Burgundy, to whom he Shad been appointed Court Painter. GA court painters salary in those days was S10O year, which was a lot of money.)
 The Altar-piece itself is II feet high in the centre and 14 feet from end to end of the wings, which are made to close up. The colors of the outside panels are subdued. and this heightens the contrast, so that when they are opened the interior seems to glow with color.
 Until Jan Van Eyck's day no such marvellous painting has been seen in Flanders. Crowds flocked to see 1t. and large sums were charged for ad- mission of the cathedral On feast days the public were admitted free.
 Bought by Huns.
 The wings of the aitar-piece that are now iE Berlin and that Belgium wants back were bought by the Ger through uedieF III IS1D. dL the time when Belgium was the bat tle-ground of France, Britain, and Germany. Copies of them have been made, and the whole altar piece re- stored, so that the people of Ghent may still see what it was like in the olden days. But copies are worthless compared to the originals, and con- sidering what havoc Germany has wrought to Belgium art treasures, the allies now declare Belgium is en- titled to the return of the wings.
 The demand for the return of the Dirk Bouts works is a similar piece of poetic justice. The great altar piece for which he Is most famous belongs in Louvain, and the wings are now In Germany.
 Dirk Bouts was the son of a. Haar lem landscape painter, and he settled in Douvain in HAS. He was appointed civic portrait painter, and he settled in Louvain in HAS. In this capacity adorned the Hotel De Vile when the Germans arrived there in 1914. Whether they survived the sack of the city had not been announced. In 146S Bouts was commissioned to paint a large tryptick of the Last Supper, and this is the altar piece mentioned in the peace treaty.
 Shutters of the altar-piece repre- senting Abraham and Me1chisedech and the gatherings of the Mama are at Munich, and wings depicting the eating of the Passover and the angel bringing food to Elias are at Berlin. They were bought for the Berlin and Munich galleries through dealers. For ma king his famous altar piece Bouts was paid 200 Rhenish f1orins.
 So the demand for the return of these art treasures is not to be won dered at after all
 The Stolen Papers.
 The papers stolen for Bismarck in the 1870 war are valuable to France, because they went a long way toward making possible the war of 1914-18. They were the instrument in a great scheme of international blackmail.
 Briefly this is their story. Just be- fore the wNr of 1870 the French Min ister of State, Rouher, warned Ma poleon III that in the event of French reverses in the war the whole coun- tryside would rise against the Emper- or Accordingly all the private pa pers of Napoleon III were removed to Rouher's chateau at Cercay to pre- vent them falling into the hands of the populace, which. fulfilling Rou- hers prediction, rose in revolt in Paris and deposed Napoleon
 The Germans discovered the papers at Cercay by accident. Bismarck found that they implicated some of the southern German states in a plot with France against Prussia. Later Bismarck used the knowledge he ob- tained to whip the southern states in to submission and thus the German Elm pire came into being.
 The Germans documents are so voluminous that after he had them a year Bismarck said he had not had time to examine them all. They con- tain revelations which would ruin the reputation of statesmen and princes still living And now France is to have them back.
 D1 IT uIEDnF0