The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-03-09
CIR Ethraria1,'s Uururr
CONDUCTED BY
FRANK PARKER STOCKBRIDGE.
LOUVAIN'S LIBRARY.


by the librarians of America and the rest of the
civilized world. Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Con-
gress, chairman of the committee having this piOus
task in charge is now in Europe, engaged, with
representatives of the British Museum the BOdleian
Library of Oxford the Bibliotheque Rationale of
France and other great libraries in assessing the
loss, so far this may be done in the absence of
any complete list of the treasures destroyed, and
determining how, by gifts FROM the bibGophiles Of
the world, the Louvan collection may regain at
least the semblance of its ancient glory. 1t can
never be the same; probably library in the world
contained so many unique specimens, so much that
cannot by any human agency be duplicated; it is
the hope of librarians that although different, it
may become even greater than before through the
generosity of America, France and England
Certified Vandalism .
Historians differ as to whether the library at
Alexandria was actually destroyed by order of
Omar the Caliph or not. There will never be room
for dispute as to the destruction of the LOuvain
library by order of the Kaiser. 1t was an act Of
vandalism wanton as it was unnecessary no plea
of military necessity" can be advanced to palliate
this crime. And nowhere is the story better told,
nowhere is it likely to be better told, than in the
memoirs Of the American Minister to Brussels
Brand Whitlock's Belgium.
There came to the American Legation from Lou
vain, Mr.. WhitlOck records, IAN old, whitehaired
ecclesiastc, a scholar and an educator, whom one
addressed "a MOnseigneur. He had left
Louvain when the exodus was ordered on Thurs
day. Monseigneur described his expert
He told it calmly Logically >connectedly, his
trained mind unfolding the events in Orderly-se-
quence; the sound of firing from Herent, the
sudden uprising of the German soldiers, the mur-
der, the lust the loot, the fires. the pillage, the
evacuation and the destruction of the city, and all
that .-
THE home of his father had been burned and
the home of his brother; his friends and his col
leagues had been murdered before his eyes, and
their bodies thrown into a cstern long lines of his
townspeople confined in the railway station, had
been taken cut and shot down; the church of st.
Peters was destroyed the Hotel de Vile, the finest
example of late Gothic extant was doomed, and the
lIalles Of the University had been consumed and
he told it all calmly
But there in the Halles of the University was
the library; its hundreds Of thousands of Volumes
It's and ancient manuscripts its unique collec-
ton of ncunabula, all had been burned, leber-
ately, to the last scrap. Monsegneur had reached
this point in his recital he had begun to pronounce
the word biblOtheque- had said, la biblio
. = and he stopped suddenly, and bit his,
quiverng lip. La bib . 90. > he went on-and
then spreading his arms on the table before him he
bowed his head upon them and wept aloud.
I'VE sat there silent, the two priests and /
le cour grOs, as the French say our own eyes
something more than moist
What Has Been Lost.
A little further along in his wonderful book Mr..
Whitlock gives this description of the Louvain
library:
1.-The Haes of the University, erected in 1917
by the ClothwOrkers as the Cloth Hall (Hall aux
Draps) which, in 1431, became the principal seat
Of the University, had come to be devoted almost
to the libraries Of the University There
in were stored Incompatible riches, more than
10000 volumes, besides $50 manuscripts dating
from the Middle Ages, and perhaps the finest col
lection of incunabula extant-more than thousand
of them. The whole library, with all its riches, was
deliberately and systematically burned; only the
naked walls of the old hall could resist the fury of
the flames. No wonder the old scholar broke down
and wept!'' .. ,....v. n...
One does not need to be bibliopfile to feel the
=