THE RAVAGES OF WAR.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11332, 9 March 1915, Page 1

THE RAVAGES OF WAR.

Jt is not alone the future of civilisation which is forever menaced by the possibility of war; the past of civilisation, with aii the precious embodiments o-f its traditions, is oven more fatally imperilled. As the world grows older and the ages recede, the richer, the more precious, the more fragile, become the an dent heirlooms of humanity- They constitute the iinal symbols of human glory : they cannot be too carefully guarded, too highly valued. But all the other dangers that threaten their integrity and safety, jf put together, do not equal war. No land that .has ever been a cradle of civilisation hut. bears witness to this sad truth. AD the sacred citadels, the glories of humanity—.Termsalem and Athens. Rniiip and Constantinople—have been ravaged by war, and,_ in every case, their ruin has been a disaster that can never he repaired. If we turn to the minor glories of more modern ages, the special treasure of Eng l land has been its parish churches, a treasure of unique charm in the world and the embodiment of the people's spirit: to-day in their battered and irreparable condition they are the monuments of. a Civil War waged all over the country with ruthloss Teligions ferooitv. Spain, again, was a land which hncl stored up, during long centuries, nearly the whole of its accumulated possessions in every Irt, sacred and secular, of fabulous value, within the walls of its great fortress-like cathedrals; Napoleon's soldiers overran the land, a lid'brought with them rapine and destruction; so that in nnuiy a shrine, as at Montserrat. Are can still's©© how in 'a few days they turned a paradise into a desert. It is not only the West that has suffered. _ln China the rarest and 1 oveliest wares and fabrics that the hand of man has wrought were storedin the Imperial Palace of Pekin; the savage ruilitajit hordes of the "V\ est broke in less than a century ago and recklessly trampled and pulled down and. fired all that- they couhl not loot. ]'n every such case' the loss is Una): the exquisite incarnation of some stage in the soul of man that is forever gone is permanently diminished, deformed or annihilated.—Havelock Ellis.