"Say to my mistress," cried the tattered envoy, "that I have heard even in far-off Thebes, the abode of Amon, that in every city injustice is done, but that justice obtains in the land of Cyprus. Yet see, injustice is done here also this day."

This was repeated to the queen, who replied "Indeed!-what is this that you say?"

Through the interpreter Wenamon then addressed himself to Hetebe. "If the sea raged," he said, “and the wind drove me to the land where I now am, will you let these people take advantage of it to murder me, I who am an envoy of Amon? I am one for whom they will seek unceasingly? And as for these sailors of the prince of Byblos, whom they also wish to kill, their lord will undoubtedly capture ten crews of yours, and will slay every man of them in revenge.

This seems to have impressed the queen, for she ordered the mob to stand on one side, and to Wenamon she said, "Pass the night . . ."

Here the torn writing comes to an abrupt end, and the remainder of Wenamon's adventures are for ever lost amidst the dust of El Hibeh. One may suppose that Hetebe took the Egyptian under her protection, and that ultimately he arrived once more in Egypt, whither Zakar-Baal had perhaps already sent the timber. Returning to his native town, it seems that Wenamon wrote his report, which for some reason or other was never despatched to the High Priest. Perhaps the envoy was himself sent for, and thus his report was rendered useless; or perhaps our text is one of several copies.

There can be no question that he was a writer of great power, and this tale of his adventures must be

regarded as one of the jewels of the ancient Egyptian language. The brief description of the Prince of Byblos, seated with his back to the window, while the waves beat against the wall below, brings vividly before one that far-off scene, and reveals a lightness of touch most unusual in writers of that time. There is surely, too, an appreciation of a delicate form of humour observable in his account of some of his dealings with the prince. It is appalling to think that the peasants who found this roll of papyrus might have used it as fuel for their evening fire; and that, had not a drifting rumour of the value of such articles reached their village, this little tale of old Egypt and the long-lost Kingdoms of the Sea would have gone up to empty heaven in a puff of smoke.

CHAPTER IV

THE PRESERVATION OF ANTIQUITIES

IN the Dresden Nachrichten, a newspaper of considerable standing, an article appeared in the second year of the late war, in which a well-known German writer advocated a ruthless attack upon the antiquities and art treasures of Italy.

"If Italian statesmen," he said, "have imagined that the art treasures in their country are a species of insurance against a too energetic conduct of the War on Germany's part, they will experience some very bitter disappointments." He tells the Italian people that the well-being of the least significant German soldier-that is to say, any oaf from the lowest grade of German life-is of more value than the most magnificent gem of ancient or modern art; and in conclusion he declares that "when the monuments and cathedrals, the statues and the pictures, the churches and the palaces, of Venice, Milan, Florence and Rome, feel the sharpness of the German sword, it will be-and God knows that it will be-a just judgment that overtakes them."

The views thus recorded are not to be regarded as the expression of an individual idiosyncrasy. The German treatment of the historical monuments of France and Belgium proved clearly enough that the Teutonic mind had discarded (let us hope tempor

arily) all reverence for ancient works of art as being a sentiment which was incompatible with the general policy of the nation; and we had abundant proof that the existence of what we reckon the greatest and most permanent treasures of civilisation was believed by our late enemies to be of infinitely less account than the smallest and most transient operation of their aggressive warfare. Of course, there were certain artistic people in Germany who would have regretted the destruction of the great masterpieces and might have felt concerned on receiving the news of such a catastrophe; but there is hardly a man of Teutonic race who would not have found excuses for the soulless creatures who then directed the activities of the nation, and would not repeat the criminal heresy that national necessity abrogates international obligations.

It is the irony of fate that the Germanic enemies of Italy, under the stress of war embraced a doctrine which was first preached by an Italian-a very young and unbalanced personage named Marinetti-who in his initial Manifesto of Futurism, dated 1909, declared that his sect "wished to destroy the museums and libraries which cover Italy with as many cemeteries."

"Would you," he wrote, "waste the best of your strength by a useless admiration of the past? To admire an old picture is to pour our sensitiveness into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward in violent gushes of action. The admirable past may be balsam for invalids and for prisoners; but we will have none of it, we, the young, the strong, the living Futurists. Come, then, seize the pickaxes and hammers! Sap the foundations of the venerable cities. We stand

upon the extreme promontory of the centuries: why should we look behind us?"

This whole manifesto, indeed, might well have been written by a Prussian officer of the school which one trusts the war has dislodged; and the ninth article of the Futurist doctrine, which says "We wish to glorify war, militarism, patriotism, the destructive arm of the anarchist, the beautiful inventions that kill, and the contempt for women," reveals a startling similarity to the creed of the German, as one saw it in those terrible years.

Our late enemies did not destroy valued historical monuments in the manner of savages who knew no better; they destroyed them because the reasoned doctrines upon which their Culture was founded declared that one living German was of greater value than all the revered works of dead masters, one blow for Germany more precious than all the art treasures in the world. The only essential difference between the teachings of Futurism, at which we laughed, and of Pan-Germanism, against which we fought with such astounding intensity, is that the Futurist advocated the wholesale destruction of all relics of the past, whereas Pan-Germanism tolerated the retention of those monuments and works of art which, owing to their situation, did not interfere in the slightest degree with the paramount activities of the day. In other words, the Germans regarded the safeguarding of these works of art as a matter quite secondary to all practical considerations. They had no objection to the protection of their own monuments, which, they realised, had some sort of patriotic worth; but they did not consider that antiquities had an ethical value in themselves, and they did not re