It is no pleasure to tell what I saw.  Shells had torn out some of the windows, the entire sash, glass, and stone frame—­all was gone; only a jagged hole was left.  On the floor lay broken carvings, pieces of stone from flying buttresses outside that had been hurled through the embrasures, tangled masses of leaden window-sashes, like twisted coils of barbed wire, and great brass candelabra.  The steel ropes that supported them had been shot away, and they had plunged to the flagging below, carrying with them their scarlet silk tassels heavy with the dust of centuries.  And everywhere was broken glass.  Not one of the famous blue windows was intact.  None had been totally destroyed, but each had been shattered, and through the apertures the sun blazed blatantly.

We walked upon glass more precious than precious stones.  It was beyond price.  No one can replace it.  Seven hundred years ago the secret of the glass died.  Diamonds can be bought anywhere, pearls can be matched, but not the stained glass of Rheims.  And under our feet, with straw and caked blood, it lay crushed into tiny fragments.  When you held a piece of it between your eye and the sun it glowed with a light that never was on land or sea.

War is only waste.  The German Emperor thinks it is thousands of men in flashing breastplates at manoeuvres, galloping past him, shouting “Hoch der Kaiser!” Until this year that is all of war he has ever seen.

I have seen a lot of it, and real war is his high-born officer with his eyes shot out, his peasant soldiers with their toes sticking stiffly through the straw, and the windows of Rheims, that for centuries with their beauty glorified the Lord, swept into a dust heap.

Outside the cathedral I found the bombardment of the city was still going forward and that the French batteries to the north and east were answering gun for gun.  How people will act under unusual conditions no one can guess.  Many of the citizens of Rheims were abandoning their homes and running through the streets leading west, trembling, weeping, incoherent with terror, carrying nothing with them.  Others were continuing the routine of life with anxious faces but making no other sign.  The great majority had moved to the west of the city to the Paris gate, and for miles lined the road, but had taken little or nothing with them, apparently intending to return at nightfall.  They were all of the poorer class.  The houses of the rich were closed, as were all the shops, except a few cafes and those that offered for sale bread, meat, and medicine.

During the morning the bombardment destroyed many houses.  One to each block was the average, except around the cathedral, where two hotels that face it and the Palace of Justice had been pounded but not destroyed.  Other shops and residences facing the cathedral had been ripped open from roof to cellar.  In one a fire was burning briskly, and firemen were playing on it with hose.  I was their only audience.