WILHELM’S SACRILEGE AVENGED.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2960, 24 March 1919, Page 5

WILHELM’S SACRILEGE AVENGED.

Tim Kaiser’s tendency to decorate churches with likenesses of himself has haul him or his effigies open to some rude treatment ot late. V hen the British treed Jerusalem from the Turks one of the things brought to light was the fresco in the German church showing the Kaiser and his consort seated upon thrones with their laps the supporting bases of a church. In Metz, William sought a place in the sunlight of sacred history and, robed in the mantle of the Prophet Daniel, stood guard in a niche in the west front of the cathedral. An impression scorns to possess some ol the correspondents that William had the prophet beheaded in order to substitute his own teto on the stone trunk, not omitting or adapting to Biblical fashions' the upturned mustaches. If so the sacrilege lias been avenged as Mr Thomas M. Johnson’s correspondence to the New York Evening Sun shows: — “The Metz Cathedral struck The keynote of the meaning of to-day’s events when the French formally reclaimed the capital of the lost province of Lorraine. One of the stone figures on the facade is that of a monk, but the face beneath the cowl is unmistakable, with its pointed moustache, pointed nose, and sloping chin, which arc those of the Kaiser himself, who ordered the head of Daniel removed and Ids own substituted. ‘The devil a monk would be!’ But to-day sacrilegious pride has its fall, for the Kaiser’s head lias been broken olf, his hands are bound with chains, and upon his breast hangs a placard proclaiming: ‘Sic transit gloria mnndi.’ The Kaiser had fled to Holland, and the rise and tall of unbounded ambition are typified by that statue.” . George Wharton Edwards, in 1 is recently " published book on “AlsaceLorraine,” reports: “One could hardly believe lids to he true, but tree it is--the acme of banality, .■ • • TJiat lovely piece of Gothic work vL.t.i was sculptured in the eighteenth century by Blondol was demolished by the German administration, who reported that Blojulcl’y stylo <1 cl not n-Teo with or carry out the original .flans of the architects of the Cathedral. Tlie removal of this master work of Bloudel was nothing short ol a crime. And one is led to behove and accept the explanation of the French architects who protested against the substitution, That it was really because Blondel was a Frenchman,' There was a whole carnival ol slaughter of Hohonzolloru statues the ni'di't before General Retain entered Metz. “William I. had toppled ever from the horse of his equestrian monument, while Frederick 111., who for many long years had pointed a menacing linger at Franco from the pedestal upon winch ho stood. Lad corny down with a rope around his neck.”