all dangers now were as
naught to the old man.

"See my little book," he said. "How beautiful the lettering! Why, upon
this book, as upon a ship, civilization sailed across the dark waters of
the Middle Ages. Look at this book of beauty. The ugliness of the tenth
century is dead. The cruelty and the slavery of bloody tyrants is dead
also. The old cannon are quite rusted away. But look at this! Behold,
its beauty is immortal! Everything else dies. Soon all the smoke and
blood will go, but beauty and love and liberty will remain."

And then lifting the little book the old collector of Louvain pressed
his lips to the vellum page, bright with the blue and crimson and gold
of seven hundred years, and in a moment passed to the soul's summer
land, where no shriek of German shells rends the air, where wicked
Germans have ceased from troubling and where the French and Belgians,
worn by the cruelty of the Huns, are now at rest and peace.

6. A Vision of Judgment in Martyred Gerbeviller

To-day everybody knows the story of Gerbeviller, the martyred.

To the northwest is that glorious capital of Lorraine, Nancy. Farther
northwest are Verdun and Toul, with our American boys. The region round
about the martyred town is a region of rich iron ores.

Some years ago, Germany found herself at bay, by reason of the
threatened exhaustion of her iron mines in Alsace-Lorraine. The news
that France had uncovered new beds of iron ore stirred Germany to a
frenzy of envy and longing.

High grade iron ore meant a new financial era for France. The exhaustion
of Germany's iron mines meant industrial depression, and finally a
second and third rate position. Rather than lose her place Germany
determined to go to war with France and Belgium and grab their iron
mines. To break down resistance on the part of the French people, the
Germans used atrocities that were fiendish beyond words. The richer the
province she wished to steal, the more terrible her cruelties.

At nine o'clock in the morning on August 27, General Clauss and 15,000
soldiers entered Gerbeviller. Ten miles to the south was the remainder
of the German army, utterly broken by the French attack. Clauss had been
sent north to dig his trenches until the rest of the German army could
retreat.

Every hour was precious. The Germans remained in the little town from 9
A. M. until 12:30 P. M. They found in the village thirty-one hundred
women, girls and children, fifteen old men (the e