The exploding shell of a French 75 mm. field gun blasts the crown from the tree of the Central Powers as the axe of Justice strikes its trunk. A background map shows British towns on the English Channel and Belgian and French cities shelled by German forces burning. A 1915 French postcard.
75, Turquie, Allemagne, Autriche, Turkey, Austria, Germany, Yarmouth, Hartlepool, Whitby, Scarborough, Ypres, Arras, Reims, LouvainMalheur aux ennemisTo the D...with the Enemy1914 1915Déposé. . . Tous Droits RéservésArtist LogoReverse:Edition Globe TrotterParisMarque Déposée Trade MarkCarte PostaleF. Bouchet, Éditeur-Imprimeur, 5bis, Rue Béranger, Paris (IIIe)Visé - Paris No. 1
". . . Compared with the towns of the north, Rheims is relatively unharmed; but for that very reason the arrest of life seems the more futile and cruel. The Cathedral square is deserted, all the houses around it are closed. And there, before us, rose the Cathedral — a cathedral, rather, for it was not the one we had always known. It was, in fact, not like any cathedral on earth. When the German bombardment began, the west front of Rheims was covered with scaffolding: the shells set it on fire, and the whole church was wrapped in flames. Now the scaffolding is gone, and in the dull provincial square there stands a structure so strange and beautiful, that one must search the Inferno, or some tale of Eastern magic, for words to picture the luminous unearthly vision. The lower part of the front has been warmed to deep tints of umber and burnt siena. This rich burnishing passes, higher up, through yellowish-pink and carmine, to a sulphur whitening to ivory; and the recesses of the portals and the hollows behind the statues are lined with a black denser and more velvety than any effect of shadow to be obtained by sculptured relief. The interweaving of colour over the whole blunted bruised surface recalls the metallic tints, the peacock-and-pigeon iridescences, the incredible mingling of red, blue, umber and yellow of the rocks along the Gulf of Ægina. And the wonder of the impression is increased by the sense of its evanescence; the knowledge that this is the beauty of disease and death, that every one of the transfigured statues must crumble under the autumn rains, that every one of the pink or golden stones is already eaten away to the core, that the Cathedral of Rheims is glowing and dying before us like a sunset. . ."
Edith Wharton toured the Western Front in 1915, reporting from the Argonne, Lorraine, the Vosges, northern France, and Belgium. In August she toured Alsace, stopping in Reims, France on her way. German artillery first shelled the magnificent Cathedral on September 19, 1914 igniting scaffolding that covered the north tower, and beginning a fire that spread to other woodwork within the building. The building was intermittently shelled throughout the war, particularly in the spring of 1917 when it was struck with 70 high-caliber shells.
Fighting France by Edith Wharton, pp. 184-186, copyright © 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1915
1915-08-13, 1915, August, Rheims, Cathedral of Rheims, Wharton
