the west where the Germans lay buried
in their trenches. Coming back from the German lines we would see this
church-tower outlined against the crimson sky like a finger pointing
God-ward, and declaring to all the world that the God above would
avenge this silent, accusing Silhouette of Sacrilege.

There has been a good deal of discussion over a certain book entitled
"I Accuse." I never saw that finger pointing into the sky as we drove
through this village that it did not cry out to the heavens and across
the short miles to the German Huns, looking down, as it did, at its
feet where the ruined homes lay, the village that it had mothered and
fathered, the village that had worshipped within its simple walls, the
village that had brought its joys and sorrows there, the village that
had buried the dead within its shadows, the village that had brought
its young there to be married and its aged to be buried; there it
stood, night after night, against the crimson sky sometimes, against
the golden sky at other times; against the rose, against the blue,
against the purple sunsets; and ever it thundered: "I accuse! I
accuse! I accuse!"

Then there is that Silhouette of Sacrilege up on the Baupaume Road.
This is called "the saddest road in Christendom," because more men have
been killed along its scarred pathway than along any other road in all
the world. Not even the road to Calvary was as sad as this road.

Along this road when the French held it, during the first year of the
war, they gathered their dead together and buried them in a little
cemetery. Above the sacred remains of their comrades these French
soldiers erected a simple bronze cross as a symbol not only of the
faith of the nation, but a symbol also of the cause in which they had
died.

A few months later when the Germans had recaptured this spot, and it
had been fought over, and the bronze cross still stood, the Hun, too,
gathered his dead together and buried them side by side with the
French. Then he did a characteristic thing. He got a large stone as a
base and mounted a cannon-ball on top of this stone, and left it there,
side by side with the French cross.

Whether he meant it or not, his sacrilege stands as a fitting
expression of his philosophy, the philosophy of the brute, the religion
of the granite rock and the iron cannon-ball.

He told his own story here. Side by side in those two monuments the
contrast is made, the causes are placed. One i