ilder methods of putting the
enemy out of action suffice and are possible. From this standpoint the
letting loose of smoke-clouds which, in a gentle wind, move quite
slowly towards the enemy is not only permissible by international law,
but is an extraordinarily mild method of war. It has always been
permissible to compel the enemy to evacuate positions by artificially
caused flooding.

"Those who were not indignant, or even surprised, when our enemies in
Flanders summoned water as a weapon against us, have no cause to be
indignant when we make air our ally and employ it to carry stupefying
(_betaeubende_) gases against the enemy. What the Hague Convention
desired to prevent was the destruction without chance of escape of
human lives _en masse_, which would have been the case if shells with
poisonous gas were rained down on a defenceless enemy who did not see
them coming and was exposed to them irremediably. The changing forms
of warfare make new methods of war continually necessary."

Rheims Cathedral

By Pierre Loti

This article by Pierre Loti (Captain Viaud) originally
appeared in L'Illustration as the last of a series of three
entitled "Visions of the Battle Front," and is translated
for THE NEW YORK TIMES CURRENT HISTORY by Charles Johnston.

To see it, our legendary and marvellous French basilica, to bid it
farewell, before its fall and irremediable crumbling to dust, I had
made my military auto make a detour of two hours on my return from
completing a service mission.

The October morning was foggy and cold. The hillsides of Champagne
were on that day deserted; with their vines with leaves of blackened
brown, damp with rain, they seemed all clad in a sort of shining
leather. We had also passed through a forest, keeping our eyes alert,
our weapons ready, for the possibility of marauding Uhlans. And at
last we had perceived the immense form of a church, far off in the
mist, rising in all its great height above the plots of reddish
squares, which must be the roofs of houses; evidently that was it.

The entrance to Rheims: defences of every kind, barriers of stone,
trenches, spiked fences, sentinels with crossed bayonets. To pass, the
uniform and accoutrements of a soldier are not enough. We must answer
questions, give the pass-words....

In the great city, which I had not visited before, I ask the way to
the cathedral, for it is no longer visible; its silhouette which, seen
fr