Republican farmer., 1919-01-31

town, than there were human beings below in the filtered streets
 Cardinal Lucon, archbishop Of Rheims. who stood steadfastly by his charge for four years during which time scarcely a day passed without 8 German shell hurling death into the city met the President at the fence of rough boards which now ex- cludes curiosity seekers and encloses the rubbish into which this most his toric edifice has been reduced. The cardinal conducted MT. Wilson to the nave of the cathedral, where in 1914 the Germans during their short oc cupation 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 All over the Tagging worn smooth through the years by millions of feet bringing Frenchmen to on hours de- votion, were piled heaps of rubbish, remnants of statuary and frescoes and fragments of columns and sculptures which were accounted the most per feet and complete examples of Goth ic art. As the President and the cardinal stood together looking up ward, while the prelate briefly re- | counted the story of four years of ! constant destruction. they looked | straight through to the ciouded sky i The snow furry that was covering | the bare ruins of the city outside was also laying blanket inside the cathe- l draI.
 The chaIky stone of Champagne. | of which the cathedral was built, is scaling off from the effects of Ger man fire and the falling snow flakes ! were mixed with an almost constant dropping of fragments. Pausing a moment before the scene of the cTuCifiXion above the north door, and before the painting of the coronation of the Virginia, over the central door, MT. Wilson silently viewed the de- l struction wrought upon those master ! pieces by the burning of the scaffold- ing when the Germans set fire to the roof of the edifice.
 The President followed the car dinal to the ruins of the chapel where old-time kings watched through the night at the time of their
 
 museum where priceless Flemish
 tapestries were ruined. He was shown where thousands of shells
 thrown from German batteries on two sides burst among the buttresses which support the main structure and 1 where forests of sculptures which or
 nament the structure have beer
 scared, nicked and torn by fragments
 from the big shells.
 Then the cardinal took him out.
 side, and they picked their way
 through rubbish heaps to a point
 from which they could view the shell. , riddied painting of the Last Judg.
 ment, above the south door; the sym. ools from Noah's ark about the great
 shattered rose window, the statue O.
 St. Anne and dozens of other work!
 of art of which virtually none es
 capped.
 AS they left the cathedral the car
 dinal gave the President a stained
 glass panel from one of the window! taken down in time to save it. Tn, !. panel is unscarred. It is circular ant } about three feet in diameter. I shows a figure of the Savior done il : many colored glass of the early cen } turies. From the cathedral tn,
 President drove to view the ruins O l the town hall, a spacious specimen O D the Renaissance style of architecture l and the Palais Royale, an eighteenth = century edifice. These two, with tn 2 cathedral. comprised the most cele s brated historical memorials O d Rheims, and not one has escaped.