Italy at War and the Allies in the West | Page 6

has
sustained the greatest damage, its magnificent interior, with the
celebrated decorations by Palma Vecchio, having been transformed
through the agency of an Austrian bomb, into a heap of stone and
plaster. Another bomb chose as its target the great dome of the church
of San Pietro di Castello, which stands on the island of San Pietro,
opposite the Arsenal. On the Grand Canal, close by the railway-station,
is the Chiesa degli Scalzi, whose ceiling by Tiepolo, one of the master's
greatest works, has suffered irreparable injury. Santi Giovanni e Páolo,
next to St. Mark's the most famous church in Venice, has also been
shattered by a bomb.
I asked the officer in command of the aerial defenses of Venice if he
thought that the Austrian airmen intentionally bomb churches, hospitals,
and monuments, as has been so often asserted in the Allied press.
"It's this way," he explained. "A dozen aviators are ordered to bombard
a certain city. Three or four of them are real heroes and, at the risk of
their lives, descend low enough to make certain of their targets before
releasing their bombs. The others, however, rather than come within
range of the anti-aircraft guns, remain at a safe height, drop their bombs
at random as soon as they are over the city, and then clear out. Is it very
surprising, then, that bombs dropped from a height of perhaps ten
thousand feet, by aircraft travelling sixty miles an hour, miss the forts

and barracks for which they are intended and hit churches and
dwellings instead?"
Intentional or not, the bombardment of the Venetian churches is a
blunder for which the Austrians will pay dearly in loss of international
good-will. A century hence these shattered churches will be pointed out
to visitors as the work of the modern Vandals, and lovers of art and
beauty throughout the world will execrate the nation which permitted
the sacrilege. They have destroyed glass and paintings and sculptures
that were a joy to the whole world, they have undone the work of saints
and heroes and masters, and they have gained no corresponding
military advantage. In every city which has been subjected to air raids
the inhabitants have been made more obstinate, more iron-hard in their
determination to keep on fighting. The sight of shattered churches, of
wrecked dwellings, of mangled women and dead babies, does not
terrify or dismay a people: it infuriates them. In the words of
Talleyrand: "It is worse than a crime; it is a mistake."
The strangest sight in Venice to-day is St. Mark's. There is nothing in
its present appearance, inside or out, to suggest the famous cathedral
which so many millions of people have reverenced and loved. Indeed,
there is little about it to suggest a church at all. It looks like a huge and
ugly warehouse, like a car barn, like a Billy Sunday tabernacle, for, in
order to protect the wonderful mosaics and marbles which adorn the
church's western façade, it has been sheathed, from ground to roof, with
unpainted planks, and these, in turn, have been covered with great
squares of asbestos. By this use of fire-proof material it is hoped that,
even should the church be hit by a bomb, there may be averted a fire
such as did irreparable damage to the Cathedral of Rheims.
The famous bronze horses have been removed from their place over the
main portal of St. Mark's, and taken, I believe, to Florence. It is not the
first travelling that they have done, for from the triumphal arch of Nero
they once looked down on ancient Rome. Constantine sent them to
adorn the imperial hippodrome which he built in Constantinople,
whence the Doge Dandolo brought them as spoils of war to Venice
when the thirteenth century was still young. In 1797 Napoleon carried

them to Paris, but after the downfall of the Emperor they were brought
back to Venice by the Austrians and restored to their ancient position.
There they remained for just a hundred years, until the menace of the
Austrian aircraft necessitated their hasty removal to a place of safety.
Of them one of Napoleon's generals is said to have remarked
disparagingly: "They are too coarse in the limbs for cavalry use, and
too light for the guns." In any event, they were the only four horses,
alive or dead, in the whole city, and the Venetians love them as though
they were their children.
If in its war dress the exterior of St. Mark's presents a strange
appearance, the transformation of the interior is positively startling.
Nothing that ingenuity can suggest has been left undone to protect the
sculptures, mosaics, glass, and marbles which, brought by the seafaring
Venetians from the four corners of the globe, make St. Mark's the most
beautiful of