And had the War Lord really knelt is it not possible that he might have found pity, humility, or even contrition?  Things easily overlooked in so large a cathedral when sitting erect, as a War Lord, before the priests’ choir, but to be noticed perhaps with one’s eyes turned to the ground.

Perhaps he nearly found one of those things.  Perhaps he felt (who knows?) just for a moment, that in the dimness of those enormous aisles was something he had lost a long, long while ago.

One is not mistaken to credit the very bad with feeling far, faint appeals from things of glory like Cologne Cathedral; it is that the appeals come to them too far and faint on their headlong descent to ruin.

For what was the War Lord seeking?  Did he know that pity for his poor slaughtered people, huddled by him on to our ceaseless machine guns, might be found by seeking there?  Or was it only that the lost thing, whatever it was, made that faint appeal to him, passing the door by chance, and drew him in, as the scent of some herb or flower in a moment draws us back years to look for something lost in our youth; we gaze back, wondering, and do not find it.

And to think that perhaps he lost it by very little!  That, but for that proud attitude and the respectful staff, he might have seen what was lost, and have come out bringing pity for his people.  Might have said to the crowd that gave him that ovation, as we read, outside the door:  ``My pride has driven you to this needless war, my ambition has made a sacrifice of millions, but it is over, and it shall be no more; I will make no more conquests.’’

They would have killed him.  But for that renunciation, perhaps, however late, the curses of the widows of his people might have kept away from his grave.

But he did not find it.  He sat at prayer.  Then he stood.  Then he marched out:  and his staff marched out behind him.  And in the gloom of the floor of the vast Cologne Cathedral lie the things that the Kaiser did not find and never will find now.  Unnoticed thus, and in some silent moment, passes a man’s last chance.

The Last Mirage

The desolation that the German offensive has added to the dominions of the Kaiser cannot easily be imagined by any one who has never seen a desert.  Look at it on the map and it is full of the names of towns and villages; it is in Europe, where there are no deserts; it is a fertile province among places of famous names.  Surely it is a proud addition to an ambitious monarch’s possessions.  Surely there is something there that it is worth while to have conquered at the cost of army corps.  No, nothing.  They are mirage towns.  The farms grow Dead Sea fruit.  France recedes before the imperial clutch.  France smiles, but not for him.  His new towns seem to be his because their names have not yet been removed from any map, but they crumble at his approach because France is not for him.  His deadly ambition makes a waste before it as it goes, clutching for cities.  It comes to them and the cities are not there.