BOMBARDMENT OF RHEIMS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 23 September 1914, Page 5

BOMBARDMENT OF RHEIMS.

CATHEDRAL DELIBERATELY

AIMED AT.

A USELESS ACT OF BARBARISM,

DISGUST IN ITALY

LONDON, Sep. 22. The Times, in a leader on the destruction of the Rheims Cathedral, says: "The Kaiser has outdone his impious crime at Louvain."

The Daily Mail correspondent at Rheims states that the fire started on Saturday afternoon. Af least 500 shells fell between early morning and sunset. Parts of the city ignited, and street after street was lurid with i lazing houses and shops. ,

Meanwhile a batttery on a hill at Nogent l'Abbelle made the Cathedral a deliberate mark. Shell after ehei 1 gnashed away the old Masonry, and an avalancne cf stonework thundered down the panelling of the altars and confessional.

The German wounded would have been incinerated but for the French doctors. As the Germans were carried out the crowd howled with uncontrollable passion, with shouts of • A mbrt!" Some soldiers among the crowd levelled their rifles, but the Abbe An'drieux sprang forward between the muzzles and the wounded, and said, "Don't fire. You will make yourselves as guilty as they."

When day dawned, the famous monument was only an empty shell.

ROME, Sep. 22.

The bombardment of Rheims Cathedral caused a thrill throughout Italy. The Giorna d'ltalia describes it as "a useless act of barbarism, due to a lunatic outburst ©f wounded vanity and cursed pride."

PARIS, Sep. 22

The bombardment of Rheims was continued on Monday. Onlyva few of the walls of the cathedral are standing, and the Hotel de Ville (town hall), the museum, and other official buildings are almost completely" destroyed. The Germans intentionally directed their artillery at. the principal buildings. Several inhabitants were killed..

During the bombardment -of the cathedral the Germans killed a number of their own wounded, who. were being tended with the French wounded, in the hop© that flying the red ■cross would save the cathedral.

(Received Sep. 23, 10:30 a.m.)

LONDON, Sep. 22

Scarcely a house round Rheims Cathedral was undamaged. 'The statue of Joan of Arc in front of iJhe cathe■dral was not damaged.