The beautiful cathedral, the historic cloth market, the library and other architectural monuments for which the city was famed, were put to the torch.

The Belgian priesthood was in woe over these and other atrocities.

Cardinal Mercier called upon the Christian world to note and protest against these crimes.

In his pastoral letter of Christmas, 1914, he thus pictures Belgium's woe and her Christian fortitude: "And there where lives were not taken, and there where the stones of buildings were not thrown down, what anguish unrevealed! Families hitherto living at ease, now in bitter want; all commerce at an end, all careers ruined; industry at a standstill; thousands upon thousands of workingmen without employment; working women; shop girls, humble servant girls without the means of earning their bread, and poor souls forlorn on the bed of sickness and fever crying: 'O Lord, how long, how long ?'--God will save Belgium, my brethren; you can not doubt it.

Nay, rather, He is saving her--Which of us would have the heart to cancel this page of our national history?
Which of us does not exult in the brightness of the glory of this shattered nation?
When in her throes she brings forth heroes, our mother country gives her own energy to the blood of those sons of hers.