It is to be hoped that renewed and careful investigation will
be made--(much preliminary inquiry has already of course taken
place)--after the war into all these cases. My own impression from what
I have heard, seen, and read--for what it may be worth--is that the plea
is almost invariably false; but that the state of panic and excitement
into which the German temperament falls, with extraordinary readiness,
under the strain of battle, together with the drunkenness of troops
traversing a rich wine-growing country, have often accounted for an
honest, but quite mistaken belief in the minds of German soldiers,
without excusing at all the deeds to which it led. Of this abnormal
excitability, the old Cure of Senlis gave one or two instances which
struck me.
We came across him by chance in the cathedral--the beautiful cathedral I
have heard Walter Pater describe, in my young Oxford days, as one of the
loveliest and gracefullest things in French Gothic. Fortunately, though
the slender belfry and the roof were repeatedly struck by shrapnel in
the short bombardment of the town, no serious damage was done.
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