sad days

About his first visit to Saint-Quentin after World War I:

"I spent two days in the martyred city… It's a painful sight. The experience made me fall to the ground. I've never seen anything like it in my life, except perhaps Messina after its destruction. It's a mass of dirty, dismal ruins… Hardly any window, any piece of furniture, any gutter remained as it was before. It rains in the houses, plaster falls down from the houses... And our beautiful cathedral, without a roof, without windows, without altars, all its pillars perforated by holes from the mines!… The people who return, will they come back with some comprehension and some faith?" (NQT XLIII/1919, 99f)
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