ing of a little bird. But most distinctly he remembered the faces of his orderly and of many young officers whom he had loved and whom he had sent to death. He could have visited Cold Harbor without a shudder, though the scenes were equally terrible, but at Gettysburg each smallest recollection affected him painfully.

He had had on his last visit an almost intolerable encounter. There had returned unfortunately on that same day a soldier who had served under him on the field. This soldier, who had lost an arm and a leg, had denounced him privately many times, but the old habit of respect kept him silent before Connor himself. His wife, however, had no restraining recollections. Informed by a guide of Connor's identity, she came and stood before him. Her angry eyes traveled with unmistakable meaning down the magnificent body which had issued unscathed from four years of battle. She had no comprehension of spiritual wounds, and she hated him, it was clear, for his soundness. She pointed to her crippled husband.

"That is what you did," she said, and walked away crying.

Another reason for staying away was that he was called upon at Gettysburg by friendly persons to explain his tactics. The guides believed in him and praised him in their addresses as the most glorious figure in the battle. They asked him a hundred questions, and he knew that they would quote or misquote him for years to come. He did not like to answer questions; this was a military and not a lay matter. It was the misfortune of the military executive that the material with which he had to work was human material, and that success as well as failure involved the destruction of human life.

As a matter of fact, he had been compelled to take but little part in the discussion of his strategy. For twenty years after the war he had served as consul, first in Quebec, then in London, and had thus been absent during the heat of the quarrel.

It was not to him alone that Gettysburg was the most vivid battle of the war, but to all the Nation. The field was most elaborately marked, most visited. In the minds of the present generation, he and many others were known alone by what they had done there. By it popularly not only he, but Underhill and Thompson, Hannan and Fife, would unfairly stand or fall.

He saw, to his surprise, as he entered the hall of his hotel at Gettysburg, the same blue-clad youngsters whom he had seen at Philadelphia and at Harrisburg. It was to this district, then, that they belonged, or they were coming here to pay a visit. He nodded to ther, and they nodded back, staring frankl. He did not anticipate that their paths were converging, that they would create for him and he for them an unforgetable situation. He passed and went to his room.

The two lads asked the clerk who he was and the clerk, a newcomer, pointed to the register.

"A. T. Connor'!" cried one, indicating the name to the other. They had studied about him, as they had studied about Napoleon and Blücher and Wellington. He was a great warrior, and they had seen but few in the flesh. They ran rapidly upstairs, as though to impart this thrilling piece of information.

In the morning General Connor rose early and looked out upon the little square. There was from here nothing to be seen which savored of battle; even the house where Lincoln slept had no mark upon it. The space before the hotel was crowded with long wagons awaiting the day's tourists. There must have been a later train; the passengers in his train could have been accommodated in one wagon.

At the door of the dining-room the old man halted, astounded. The room was filled with boys in blue uniforms: the pair of which he had caught glimpses were multiplied a hundred times. He understood now the train with its uniform spots of blue-they were not, after all, the reflection of the sky! He smiled as the boys rose suddenly and stood at attention, and he guessed who they were and why and he guessed who they were and why they had come, before one of the officers in charge stepped forward.

"This is the Senior Class of the West Point Military Academy, sir. We bring each class to learn from you. How fortunate that we can see this year, not only the scene of your achievement, but you as well!"

General Connor found himself in another moment at the officers' table. He demurred at the honor shown him, but he could not help enjoying the quick turn of young heads, the tribute of so many pairs of young eyes.

He accepted the invitation of the commanding officer to join the party, and sat with him and the junior officers in the first carriage. He heard the story well told, and he stepped out with the boys to read inscriptions, to examine old breastworks, to explain to them the old muzzle-loading cannon.

Once or twice he addressed them all, passionately elaborating the guide's story. "When the armies advanced, they tried to protect the town, they even changed their line of fire so as to avoid destroying it. They warned the citizens, they protected little children, they compelled, sometimes by force, venturesome boys to get into places of safety."

And again:

"One woman was killed by accident, and mourned by both sides. One woman, and she the only civilian !"

The officers looked at one another, understanding him perfectly; the cadets understood a little more slowly, but the brighter minds helped the others to interpret. The officers smiled; neutrality was as yet enjoined, but this was simply a statement of truth, the question of neutrality was not involved.

But, though he stepped so lightly and spoke so clearly, and though the morning air was so clear and fresh and the scene so beautiful, General Connor was gravely disturbed. He sensed dimly now the

strange convergence of his path and the path of these young soldiers.

The guide who had seen him long ago was on his side, and did not even suggest that there was a dissenting opinion when he described the Connor charge. The cadets knew that there were two sides, but they smiled at envious historians who could for a moment have decried him. They believed in him and respected his judgment as they would have believed in the goodness of their mothers. The support of two hundred ardent young soulswhat better earnest for future glory could human fame desire?

At last, on little Round Top, General Connor was persuaded to address them as a body. He stood on a flat rock, the officers beside him, the lads grouped below him. He looked down upon the Valley of Death and Devil's Den and across to the opposite slope. The great field was spread out before him as on a map; he could see it in its entirety, not merely in its physical outlines, but in its historical significance. But the lads could see only him, in his dark-blue suit, reminiscent of the past, his great beard blown about by the morning breeze. He was like a divinity to them. They wished to emulate him, but they despaired while they aspired.

He began to speak at once, outlining for them briefly the course of the battle from the tactician's standpoint. In short, sharp sentences he brought them to the engagement of his own troops.

Then suddenly he paused. The converging paths had met. The question of his wisdom in ordering his famous charge had been until this moment an academic one, it was of the past, it had become a point of history, it seemed no longer vital.

But now all was changed. It was vital, it was of momentous consequence. He must describe it, explain it, justify it. He heard again a dull roar, and knew that it was not the guns of Gettysburg, but the guns before Verdun. His country could not fail, and upon a lad before him might suddenly be thrown in dear knows what threatening catastrophe-as had been thrown upon him in youth-a responsibility of consummate importance.

It was perhaps cruel that his fame should hang to so great a degree upon the impression made upon these boys. But fate takes strange courses. He had longed so intensely and so despairingly to

do something for his country. He knew suddenly that there was one hard, hard way in which he could serve her. He had not during all these years deceived others, still less had he deceived himself. There had been room for doubt until he saw the field at this 'moment anew through keen and anxious eyes.

He looked down into the young faces. "I want you to listen very carefully," he said, slowly. "The charge which is called by my name has been both commended and condemned." He straightened his massive shoulders. "Those who commend it are wrong, those who condemn it are right. It was a mistake. Listen to me very carefully and I will tell you why."

MONSIEUR, I, Hubert Billaudel, porter of the palace in this Rue Cardinal de Lorraine, of his Eminence Monseigneur Luçon, am at your service.

You see a ruined palace but for this room in which I and my wife live. For years, except a few months a year ago, we have been doorkeepers in the house of the Lord.

For four years and more we lived under a rain of shells. Our worst times were in the autumn of 1914 and then a year ago.

On September 4, 1914, the Germans entered Rheims. Some days later they were defeated at the Marne. They thirsted for revenge. They knew that nowhere in France could they wreak vengeance where it would hit harder than here. They decided to destroy our Cathedral and city.

In retiring from the city to bombard it they informed us by notices pasted on our walls that if we were not perfectly calm, that if we tried to fight them, that if we raised barricades in our streets-in a word, if we did anything at all that might harm them-they would hang the one hundred hostages whom they had already taken from our citizens. There you have Prussian militarism.

In two days they let more than fifteen hundred bombs drop on Rheims, not counting the incendiary bombs charged with picric acid, mostly directed, so we thought, against our Cathedral. It was on a Saturday morning, I remember, when we noticed that their batteries at Nogent l'Abbesse, about eight kilometers [five miles] away to the east, were apparently making the Cathedral their objective point. When a bomb struck the church, voilà, there was a noise as of thunder from falling stone. But the Cathedral resisted far better than we supposed possible indeed, it is unbelievable that it should be still standing. It shows that the architects of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when they built churches, built better and solider than do the people of our times. Is it not so?

On September 19 the picric bombs set fire to some wooden staging which had been put up to repair one of the eastern walls of the Cathedral, and this fire eventually spread to the roof and interior. The long flames licked the towers themselves.

This act was not one of those acts of sudden violence done in the rage of combat. It was the voluntary, cold-blooded act of a Prussian who could say, as he did say, against the better and outspoken testimony of another part of Germany: "We are in no need of justification or excuse. All that our soldiers do to injure the enemy is well done and is justified in advance. If all the monuments, if all the masterpieces of architecture, situated between our cannon and that of the enemy went to the devil it would be all the same to us.'

The Germans claimed that there had been a post of observation on one of the

Cathedral towers and that this explained the efficacy of the French artillery fire

the Boche infantry. Our Marshal Joffre at once denied this allegation, Monsieur. He declared, what we here know was the truth, that the French military command had never, at any moment, placed a post of observation in or on the Cathedral. But the Germans were glad to have any excuse, even one they made themselves. They were smarting with the defeat General Joffre had in flicted upon them at the Marne.

In comparison with the rest of the church, those towers seem much higher than they did when you saw them before the war, Monsieur, do they not? The high roof is now gone, you see, from the nave, transepts, and choir; only some of the small chapels have their vaultings. Worse still, the splendid twelfth and thirteenth century glass is gone from the windows. And the stone figures of the saints in the doorways and on the façade will always bear the brutal gashes of the Boche.

And this was our Cathedral? Do you know what that means to us Rémois, Monsieur? Why, all our people, even the Protestants here, love to pray there where Joan of Arc once prayed, where our early Christians prayed. You might say that this was the religious cradle of France.

And look at the Cathedral, Monsieur. Is it not the most beautiful you ever saw anywhere in this world? Is it not a masterpiece of our national art? Ah, the Boche knew if he could destroy, it he would strike at the soul of France.

Every one was sad here when the Cathedral was attacked; every one was crushed in spirit. Why, the Protestant pastor wrote to our Cardinal that the Cathedral belonged to Christianity as a whole. His Eminence replied in agreement and also with an expression of his sympathy because the Protestant temple, too, had been destroyed. And the Jewish rabbi wrote to Monseigneur that the attempt to ruin the Cathedral was an odious blasphemy against God, the Father of us all. To the rabbi Cardinal Luçon replied in a grateful and cordial letter.

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As to the bombardment a year ago and more, which really began the great German drive, we were warned beforehand, and we all felt that this time Rheims would be completely annihilated. With this prospect in view, his Eminence said to my wife and me: As you have two sons in the war, who are always exposed to enemy guns, why should you stay here any longer to meet the certain death now upon us? Go, I command you. I will fol low you." Eh bien, we went early in March, but he did not leave until the 17th. He and the Mayor were the last to leave Rheims.

Then the city had no citizens. We thought that the Boche would raze the whole place and not leave one stone on

another, and he tried to do so. Yet here we are back again, and, what is more, our two boys fought through the whole war and came out without a scratch.

Deign to enter through the gate, Monsieur. Here is the court. You behold the palace before you. It is, you see, completely gutted. There is no more a first story, a second story. Only the façade is left. To the right there was the Cardinal's chapel, where he said Mass every morning. Here was his study. Back of all is the garden. To the left was a monumental staircase leading to the second story. One morning up there his Eminence was dressing. A shell struck close to him. He moved to one side, and in that instant another shell hit the place where he had been.

You say you are an American, Monsieur. My wife and I are proud to make your acquaintance. You Americans have saved France. Yes, yes, without you we might have had a German-made peacewho knows? And not only that, you saved. in particular, us Rémois from hunger and want. When my wife and I were flying from Rheims, it was the Americans who gave us food; and not only food, but sometimes clothes too. And when I was hurt it was the American Dr. Hupkeens who cured me, and who did it for nothing too.

The porter excused himself for a moment or two, and his wife had a chance to have her say. When he returned, he slipped a little piece of broken but richly colored glass into my hand, with the remark: Pray accept this, Monsieur. It is of the twelfth century and came from our rose window. See the mark of the fire in the corner. It shows what the old France has had to suffer."

It was indeed the symbol of the spirit of faith and beauty which brought into being those noblest monuments of the Gothic age the cathedrals of France.

And because of this, when we see the evidences of their barbarous destruction. shall we not cry for justice? Why, these very stones cry!

And yet Rheims Cathedral in its pristine beauty was never as impressive as it is now in the majesty of its mutilation. Always a monument of the first rank in history, art, and religion, it seems now more impressive than ever in its woe. "You should see the ruin by moonlight," the gatekeeper had said. Would that I might! But in this Pompeii of France, where al most every block is but a shapeless heap (nothing could be more melancholy than the completeness of the devastation of a city which had 125,000 inhabitants before the war), there is no inn remaining, and the last train leaves before the moon rises.

From the Cardinal's palace I walked away towards the choir of the Cathedral and came to the first shade of a tree I have found in Rheims. As I stop to write down what the porter has been telling me I