Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/109

Rh twin towers and the rose window won't give you a sense of unbelievable tragedy, or an instinct to speak not at all or in whispers. That is because the horror of Rheims from the front is a matter of detail. The left hand tower rises in the shade of ashes. The semblance of figures, featureless and stripped, nevertheless have something human about them. They are like victims of the ancient trial by fire. Instinctively one glances at the brave little bronze figure on horseback which miraculously has survived each bombardment. More than ever Joan of Arc belongs here. Her attitude with fag uplifted is one of inspired command. She seems about to lead the wraiths of the cathedral to a stern reckoning.

We entered the desolate structure. I removed my hat. A staff officer shrugged his shoulders.

"That is not necessary," he said. “So many men have been killed in here that the edifice is no longer consecrated.”

His comment expressed, perhaps, more than its intention. For there is a depressive feeling within whose source is certainly more remote than the emptiness and the battered walls and pillars. The emptiness reaches you first of all. The aisles are vast, the open spaces apparently endless. Pigeons, flying between the tracery of the eyeless windows and about the roof, accent the sense of