GERMANY'S VANDALISM.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 706, 23 September 1914, Page 5

GERMANY'S VANDALISM.

RHEIMS' CATHEDRAL DESTROYED. WANTON DESTRUCTION. Received this day, 12.5 a.m. London/ Monday. The Daily Mail correspondent at Rheims states the fire started on Saturday afternoon, and at least 500 shells fell between early morning and sunßet. Fart of the city several hundred yards square was ignited, and street after street was lurid with blaz ing houses and shops. Meanwhile a battery on the hill at Noagetlabbesse made the Cathedral a deliberate mark. Shell after shell smashed away the old masonry, and an avalanche of stonework thundered down in the steets. Subsequently the scaffolding at the east end of the Cathedral ignited Burning splinters fell on the roof and the whole of the old oak timbers caught. Soon the nave and transepts were a roaring furnace. The flames leaped to the towers at the western end; blading pieces of carved woodwork crashed to the floor, where the Germans had accumulated great piles of straw intending to use the Cathedral as s hospital. These ignited, devouring the panelling of the altars and cdnfessional. German wounded would have been incinerated but for the French doctors. As the Germans were carried out the crowd howled in uncontrollable passion. There were shout of a mort, and some of the soldiers among the crowd levelled ttieir rifles, but the Abbe Andrieux sprang forward between the muzzl'ea and the wounded, and said "Don't fire; you make yourselves aa guilty as they." When day dawned the famous monument was only an empty shell.

INDIGNATION IN ITALY. USELESS BARBARISM. Received Tuesday, 9.55 p.m. Rome, Monday. The bombardment of Rheims Cathedral oas sent a thrill throughout Italy. The Fiornal Ditalia describes it as a usfilesa act of barbarism; a lunatic outburst of wounded vanity and cursed pride.