Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/106

Counter-Currents educational institutions in this day of enlightenment; but it very imperfectly controlled, or controls, the actions of men or of nations. If our confidence in the future were not based upon ignorance of the past, we should better understand, and more courageously face, the harsh realities of life.

Two lessons taught by the war are easily learned. There is no safety in talk, and there is no assurance that the world's heritage of beauty, its triumphs of art and of architecture, will descend to our children and our grandchildren. We never reckoned on this loss of our common inheritance. We never thought that the gracious gifts made by the far past to the dim future could be so speedily destroyed, and that a single day would suffice to impoverish all coming generations. What can the pedantry, the "culture," of the twentieth century give to compensate us for the loss of Rheims Cathedral? The deficit is too heavy to 90