Inscription

"DESTROYED BY TEUTONIC FURY; RESTORED BY AMERICAN GENEROSITY." Thus reads the inscription that is to be carved on the fa?ade of the new Library at Lou vain, work on which was ordered resumed last week by Whitney Warren, Manhattan architect.

Precisely why the work had ever been stopped was obscured in a fog of misunderstanding. Mr. Warren was under, the impression that a cessation had been ordered by Nicholas Murray Butler, President of Columbia University, acting for the Carnegie Endowment, one of the chief contributors to the U. S. fund for the reconstruction of the Library. But Dr. Butler denied that he had ordered the work to stop, pointed out that he had no power so to order.

He admitted, however, that he had suggested at the time the Locarno compacts were signed (TIME, Oct. 26, 1925, et seq.) that the inscription be modified, suggesting "DESTROYED BY WAR; RESTORED BY AMERICAN LOVE." His reasons for this suggestion were that the inscription should emphasize "not past differences between these peoples but their present agreements."

Mr. Warren's order for the immediate resumption of work goes in the teeth of German protests against monuments of this type. Only recently the Berlin Government made unofficial representations against a War memorial at Dinant, Belgium, depicting a German soldier holding above his head a baby speared on a bayonet. Nevertheless, Mr. Warren said that his action in regard to the Louvain Library reflected the sentiments of most of the population of Louvain.

The original inscription--the one that is now to be placed on the building--was approved by the late Desire Cardinal Mercier, who witnessed what has been described as the wanton burning of the Library with its great treasure of books,