Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 180, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1915 — BIG EDIFICE RUED [ARTICLE]

BIG EDIFICE RUED

» -•* . . ~\ Great Cathedral at Soissons Wrecked by German Shells. Teuton Missiles Leave It a Venerable Broken Twelfth Century Monument of Desolation Town Is Practically Deserted. By C. INMAN BARNARD. Paris. —I made a flying visit to Soissons cathedral —or, rather, what is now left of this superb twelfth century edifice. I found the venerable Abbe Landais, vicar of the parish, standing broken-hearted amid the heaps of ruins, now and then seekIhg with trembling hands for a fragment of the ancient stained-glass window given by Blanche de Castillo, but now lying shattered in piles of broken masonry, wreckage and dust. In the roofless nave near three ogival doors, once the pride of Romanesque architecture, Abbe Landais greeted me with these words: “This is a terrible misfortune. Not a single pane of the beautiful stained glass of the rosace windows nor of the side windows remains. It was only last Tuesday that an exquisite rosace, with its 12 rayons forming part of a tympanum of large stained glass, a structure of four divisions, was unharmed; but on Tuesday morning a Gferman projectile smashed to .atoms this last relic of the stained glass. “The masterpieces of stained glass art were the crimson and blue portraits of Saint Louis and of Jeanne d’Arc in kneeling postures. These were demolished this week.” As one approaches Soissons posted notices announce “Road repaired. Proceed only at a walking pace. Make no dust.” This reminds the visitors that the Germans are intrenched 700 yards away, on the right bank of the River Aisne, and they keep up a constant, fire on Soissons, on the cathedral and on the ruins of the ancient abbey of Saint Jean des Vignes, where Thomas a Becket lived for nine years. The town of Soissons is deserted, except for a dozen inhabitants, who prefer to live in the cellars—all that is left of their houses. The cathedral is a mere skeleton of massive arched buttresses which support nothing except shell-pierced walls, ms one stands in what was once the clear, open sky is seen, a&<* occasionally a stray shell adds heaps of ruins. The famous ajttque portal on the south side no longoMkists. The south tower and the Bpire®lSta*d as a sort of rugged, fragmentary momßln«kt*,pt