Anniversary Address

Extract

It is almost exactly twenty-five years ago that Sir Arthur Evans, then President of the Society, read his annual address at the first anniversary-meeting after the outbreak of the last war. On that occasion he had to deplore the extensive destruction of churches and houses, of libraries and works of art, which had marked the advance of the German armies through Belgium into northern France. Sir Arthur then cited the pronouncement of the Prussian General Disfurth in which he set forth the German Army's view of such matters: ‘Even though all the monuments, all the works of art, all the masterpieces of architecture which happen to come between our guns and those of the enemy are blown to the devil it will be nothing to us.’ We can, I think, be assured that the same views are current in the same quarters to-day and, when and if the opportunity arrives, a destruction, enforced by a deeper malice and a wider capacity, will be loosed upon the monuments of our history and our culture.