AND MARS GLOATS

For several years subsequent to 1918 the air of Europe was filled with the clatter and clang of builders and the word Reconstruction was on every lip. While the world now hears less about the tremendous task of rearing new structures on Europe's ruins, the process is still under way; and now that the battered homes of refugees have been replaced, those who are directing the rehabilitation find an even more difficult duty in restoring the monuments of culture so uterly devastated during the four years of war.

The library of the University of Louvain, which had stood for four centuries, was destroyed during the first month of the war. For several years the construction of its successor has been in progress, and now the new building is almost ready for occupancy. Beautiful the new structure is, and larger and more convenient than the old, but it is a mockery, a hollow shell that has lost the priceless treasure that once made Louvain the pride of a nation. The manuscripts and volumes, all too scanty, that remained as the inheritance of the present world from the mighty Charles V and Thomas a Kempis are gone--"destroyed by German fury", some would say; but how can one nation be accused for a delirium in which the whole world raged?

Proponents of war, if any still dare so to style themselves, have excused the slaughter of millions on Malthusian grounds of reasoning; but not even the most heartless science can acquit humanity of guilt in the destruction of its noblest attainments. And still the nations, without even the wisdom of a burnt child, rush to heap ever higher their piles of weapons, that they know must inevitably, unless some power can stop the insane contest, fall upon them and bury them once more in war.