New Britain herald., 1923-07-17
LOUVAIN IS RISING
 FROM WARS ASHES
First Wing Of Restored Library
 Is Blessed Today
By The Associated Press.

I By The Associated Press.
 I Louvain, Belgium, July IT. Lou I vain university, world famous treasure | house of art and learning, destroyed l by the Germans. is rising from It's ashes
 l Today. less than two years after the 1 laying of the corner stone, Cardinal l Mercier, primate of Belgium, blessed the completed first wing of the re
 stored library in the building of which l the American committee for the re- storation of Louvain university played
 so large part. Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia univer i sity and chairman of the executive committes of the American organiza- tion delivered an address and placed ] in the library a book containing the names of the American teachers and school children who contributed near 1 ly s40.o00 to the restoration fund. The architecture is of the pure 1 Flemish renaissance type the so-called Rubens style, the material being white stone and red brick with roof of blue slate. [a.H.& The ceremony took place in the
 presence of Grown Prince Leopold, who placed the first book on the shelves. Speaking with great feeling.
 Cardinal Mercier alluded to the begin | ming of the work of rebuilding the university in July, 1921 and the rapid progress that has been made.
 We are almost stunned, gentlemen of the national committee of the | United States" he said, by the con- l trast which your interpid initiative | made to the ruins heaped up around us with the echoes of the guns still almost audible and grief still darken- 1 ing our atm osphere.
 Only two years have passed since ! Nicholas Murray Butler and the na- tional committee of the United States formed the project to reconstruct in Iouvain that which the Germans in 1 it of criminal folly had destroyed and already the magnificent edif1ce dis plays one of it's wings, and permits us to fortell it's splendor when, in 1925, the 'universite Brabanconne' will cele-
 brate it's fifth centenary, and on which occasion your compatriots will
 come in crowds to admire their work of art.
 Tt is yours, in fact, this work of
 art; your artists Whitney Warren and
 Charles Wettmore conceived it; their
 select coworker Mr. Greenough, di-
 rected it's executions: your workmen
 erected it.f ..-
 Tremendous cheers interrupted the
 cardinal when he spoke of the Ameri-
 can gifts, and the American, Belgium
 and French anthems were played as
 the part taken by each nation in the
 rebuilding was told
 In his address Mr. Butler said:
 Tn world still troubled by the
 problems and still struggling with the
 difficulties created by the great war,
 we come today to mark the accom-
 plishment of substantial progress to-
 ward repairing the wars damage
 hat progress, fortunately, is marked
 1ot alone by the rising fabric of the new and beautiful library of the uni 1 fersity of Louvaine, but by the close end tender ties of friendship and at- lection which have brought to the support of this undertaking tens of l thousands, yes hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in the United States of America which lies | nearly 4,0oo miles away"