Detail from Cram's 1903 Railway Map of the German Empire with the states of the Empire: Elsass and Lothringen, or Alsace and Lorraine, the regions taken from France after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.
"— While informing us that a raid on Cologne caused 248 deaths, the newspapers strive to confer the monopoly of frightfulness on German shells, accusing them of carefully picking out nurseries and churches for their attentions. Would it not be more straightforward to blame such outrages on the base folly of war itself?"
Undated entry between April 12 and 14, 1918 from the diary of Michel Corday, a senior civil servant in the French government, about the Allied bombing of Cologne, Germany. The German advance in Operation Michael put Paris within the range of a new German gun. On Good Friday, March 29, a shell had struck the Church of St. Gervais, tumbling part of the walls onto the congregation, killing 91 and wounding 68. In his diary, Corday often comments on the hypocrisy of the French government, press, and pro-war populace. Cologne, Germany, was a major communication center between Germany, Belgium and France, being about 75 km from the Belgian border and 260 km north northeast of Verdun.
The Paris Front: an Unpublished Diary: 1914-1918 by Michel Corday, page 336, copyright © 1934, by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publisher: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., publication date: 1934
1918-04-13, 1918, April, Cram's Elsass-Lothringen, Cologne, bombing
