WAR ON ART.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 13540, 18 November 1914, Page 9

WAR ON ART.

Those wKo talk of German "culture" should read some of ■ the •; inscriptions written m defaced' houses by these missionaries of <the higher civilisation. Return for. a * moment to unhappy Termonde: Attila's • barbarians could not have .wiped out the products of "culture!' more, completely. There were many old masters represented m the municipal art gallery. All but three were removed; by the townspeople — just ■m time. The three that remained were Regiment of Infantry) and cut to bits, removed by <the Prussians, (the 48th • One manufacturer who collected old Diitch and Flemish prints found his portfolios slashed into ribbons after the first visitation (his house was "burned at the second) and rthis message written on the door 'of his library : "Such work is for fools and - women !" ' Tliey spare factories, 'when v the mood pleases <them, for they' can appreciate factories. I have yet to hear of any instance of plunder m an occupied town which did not embrace the systematic wanton destruction of. all pictures hanging on -tlie walls m private dwellings, or m public galleries, and even those hanging m churches, although the edifices themselves might be left undamaged. ' ' The_e advance agents • of' German civilisation show a fondness- for writing anonymous "jokes" and scurrilous epithets on buildings. I have seen mkny, j such sentences. Belgians, English," Frenchment. are all made the subject of J . abuse..-'" ; "'...-. ..;*.■■ I 'have seen, ; too,- niany obscene and disgraceful sentences 'm -German — and , occasionally m bad French ; 0.n.c0 m , English— rwhich' express- the attitude of ! ■the Kiiser's men towards the women of the land they have invaded. " . Nothing 'else sums up the character ,of these., troops, and ; the spirit m -which they aro~ making war, so completely as two such iriscriptions I saw at Termonde. ; \ ' ' . v I cannot; repeat them: Sufficient to say that- they wduld disgrace even- the legions of a barbarian State. They shpi^ that this ; is7more a war to crush the spirit of,; militarism which these soldiers represent — it is a .war'.'.touphold tho honor of -women.