The Fall of Antwerp 247 scouts Instead of the omens before giving battle, the spirit of man himself remains unchanged, still un- conquerable, still willing to dare all that those things he holds dear may survive even though he must perish. Thus it was that even as the world mourned the destruction of the glorious monuments of Belgium, saw in the ruin of Louvain and half a score of Flem- ish cities known to all who love beautiful things a hopeless subtraction from its capital of architecture and of art, it had in the same moment to recognize the gain, the increase in the spiritual glories of man- kind. In our own times, as contemporary as the latest edition of the morning paper, there was re- vealed once more amidst the crumbling walls of Ant- werp, in the blackened, shell-torn fields of Flanders, the spirit without which architecture was impossible, art could not have flourished, the spirit that gave Greece existence, without which the Parthenon would not have been, the inspiration that was before and beneath all that the Hellenic genius gave the world. In a larger sense, then, the siege of Antwerp, as it symbolized the resistance of the gallant little Bel- gian people, was an event which Instantly took its place in the enduring history of the world. It came to us In a newspaper still damp from the press, but so long as written history endures men will grope through scanty records as we search the Imperfect resources of ancient times to discover, if we may, one