SLOW DOOM OF RHEIMS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLV, Issue 3984, 17 July 1915, Page 7

SLOW DOOM OF RHEIMS.

"More awful than the destruction of small villages is the slow doom oi Reims,” writes Mr Philip Gibbs in the ■'•Chronicle.” "A few days ago 1 stood on the edge of a great battlefield in Champagne, and from an eyrie in a tree above the valley, looked across to the Cathedral, that shrine of history where the bones of Kings lie, and where every stone speaks of saints and heroes and a thousand years of worship. ‘The German guns \ver‘o still firing around it, and its. great Avails stood grim and battered in a wreck of smoke. For nearly nine months the city of Reims has suffered the wounds of Avar. Shrapnel and air-bombs, incendiary shells, and monstrous ‘marmites’ have fallen within its boundaries week by week, sometimes only one or two on. an idle day, sometimes in a raging storm of fire, but always killing a few more people, always shattering another house or tAvo, always spoiling another bit of sculptured beauty,”