PRIEST HONOURED

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, Issue 213, 23 August 1927, Page 3

PRIEST HONOURED

HERO OF SENLIS. ECHO OF 1914. A special train left Paris for Senlis (Oise) on the morning of June 22, (states the “Post’s” Paris correspondent). In the train were the musicians comprising the orchestra of the Paris Conservatoire. There were 250 singers of the Coeur Mixte de Paris. There were several principals of the Paris Opera. There were representatives of a committee which comprised the Prime Minister, all the leading generals of France, all the principal Ambassadors in Paris. And all these persons were bound for Senlis, in order to do honour to an eighty-four-year-old cleric—Mgr. Dourlent, Arch-priest of Senlis, who saved his town from destruction by the Germans in 1914. Senlis is a bit of medieval France, one of the few remaining architectural vestiges of a bygone area. An eighteenth century house is modern there. At nightfall, when one can no longer view the modernity or one’s own costume, it is easy to imagine one’s self four centuries back. Senlis knows Hugues Capet. It knew and loved Henry IV., and in September, 1914, it knew and hated Kluck. The German armies swarmed through the town and seized hostages. The Mayor, M. Odent, was one, nad he was shot. The killing was announced as a reprisal for alleged activities of franctireurs. The Abbe Dourlent, canon of the Cathedral of Senlis, was taken hostage, along with others. The German staff was in an urgly mood, and threatened to shoot everybody in the town. Finally the Saint-Martin quarter of Senlis was set on fire. Abbe Dourlent appealed to the enemy commanders. “Shoot me, but don’t burn Senlis," he cried. They would not listen at first, but the impassioned pleas of the old priest finally prevailed. The German soldiers were ordered to check the conflagration they had started. Senlis was saved. -So Paris went to Senlis, and Mgr, Dourlent smiled, for he knew that the receipts of the great concert in the cathedral would go towards necessary installations in the cathedral.