Famous Cathedral Destroyed

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 102, 23 September 1914, Page 5

Famous Cathedral Destroyed

JifiKIMS A MASS OF RUINS,

THE FAMOUS CATHEDRAL

WRECKED.

INEXCUSABLE VAN DAL ISM.

.New York, September 21

i Advices from Bordeaux state that j Rheims is a mass of ruins. The colleges and public buildings, in addition to the Cathedral, were destroyed. Times and Sydney Sun Services, Received 22, 6.40 p.m. London, September 22. The Times, in a leader on the destruction of the Kieiins Cathedral, says: "Tho Kaiser has outdone his imperious crime at Louvain."

Amsterdam, .September 21.

A German official communique says: "The French at Rheims compelled us to reply to their fire. We regret that the city was damaged. Orders were issued to spare the Cathedral as much as possible."

Sydney, September 22,

M. Deleasse has cabled to the French Consul, protesting at German vandalism in the destruction of Rheims Cathedral, thus robbing humanity of an incomparable portion of its artistic inheritance.

CATHEDRAL DELIBERATELY DESTROYED.

BOMBARDED FROM DAWN TO SUNSET.

FRENCHMEN MADDENED BY OUT RAGES.

Received 23, 12.5 a.m. London, September 21, Tho Daily Mail correspondent at Rheims states that the fire started on Saturday afternoon. At least 500 shells fell between early morning and sunset. Party of the city several yards square ignited, and street after street - was lurid with blazing houses and shops. Meanwhile a battery on a hill at Noagent l'Abbelle made the Cathedral a deliberate mark. Shell after shell smashed away the old masonry, and an avalanche of stonework thundered down the panelling of the altars and confessional. The German wounded would' have been incinerated but for the French doctors. As the Germans were carried out tlis crowd howled with uncontrollable passion, with shouts of "A mort!" Some soldiers among the crowd levelled their rifles, but the Abbe Andrieux sprang forward between the muzzles and the wounded, and said, "Don't Tire. You will make yourselves as guilty as they." When day dawned, the famous ,i ment was only an empty shell. ITALY THRILLED WITH ANGER. "USELESS ACT oV BARBARISM." Received 22, 9.50 pjn. | Rome, September 22. The bombardment of Rheims cathedral caused a thrill throughout Italy. The Giornal d'ltalia describes it as "a useless act of barbarism, due to a lunatic outburst of wounded: vanity and cursed pride." RED CROSS DISREGARDED. Received 23, 1.40 a.m. Pftris, September 21. The bombardment of Rheims was continued on Monday. Only a few of the walls of the cathedral are standing, and the Hotel de Yille (town hall), the museum, and other official buildings are almost completely destroyed. The Germans intentionally directed their artil- ' lery at the principal buildings. Several inhabitants were killed. During the bombardment of the cathedral the Germans killed a number of their own wounded, who were being tended with the French wounded, in the hope that flying the red cross would savo the cathedral. (The cathedral at Rheims was one of the finest Gothic structures in Europe. It was begun in 1212. Six hundred statues adorned the triple portal of its western front, over it being a gorgeous rose-window filled with exquisite ambercolored thirtecnth-centurv glass. The interior, also beautified with rich old glass, was vast, but in perfect symmetry and majestic in the extreme. It contained beautiful tapestry (Gobelin was a native of Rheims), a clock with I moving figures, one of the oldest in existence, and the flask of reputed holy oil which was brought from heaven by a dove to St. Rcmigius when he baptised Slovis, King of the Franks, in 496. This flask was smashed to atoms by a revolutionist in 1793, but reappeared at the coronation of Charles X. in 1525).