Vandalism

“ Here, neither do insignia of triumph call to mind the afflicting scenes of war, nor do emblems of conquest strike the eye of the travelled visiter, and damp his enjoyment by blending with it bitter recollections. Vandalism is the only enemy from whose attacks the monuments, here assembled, have been rescued. ”

“ So, also, we blast rock, in order to get stones for a stone wall, or for the filling of a road-bed. And we rip up old clothes in order to have rags, and to make room in our homes for other things. Destructiveness from a sheer love of destructiveness is not work—it is vandalism. The true Man works. ”

“ Another problem that has constantly confronted every administration is vandalism. A vandal is any person who takes flowers or specimens and writes on or defaces natural objects, and his name is legion. The more cunningly contrived a work of nature becomes, the greater the temptation to remove it to one’s own premises. This urge reduces even dignified people to the most amazing behavior. ”

“ I was too heart-sick and indignant to seek another evidence of the lengths to which a conquering army can go in pitiless, unmeaning destruction, when nothing can result from such vandalism but hatred and revenge. ”

“ It is a public opinion looking with indifference on this wanton, barbarous, disgraceful vandalism. It is a spendthrift people recklessly wasting its heritage. It is a Government careless of the future and unmindful of a pressing duty. ”

“ One could not be expected to take so frivolous a view of life, therefore you will in self defense take every possible precaution to suppress vandalism and thievery? Never, my dear sir, never! You must take every possible precaution to reduce the spirit of vandalism and of thievery. The acts are in themselves unconsequential—they are but the product of a diseased mind or an indifferent training. The spirit, here as elsewhere, is all important. ”

“ The same vandalism, in varying degrees, has been [Pg 67] at work in every part of the land, and nothing has yet been done effectively to check it, whether by legislation, education, or appeal to public opinion: it seems to be absolutely no one's business to protect what ought to be a cherished national possession. ”

“ There seem to be vandals in almost every community, and sometimes they seem to be especially numerous in small communities, perhaps because of the lack of police protection. Sometimes vandalism is wanton,—that is, it results from an apparent love of being destructive. Most often it is purely thoughtless. Few people would knowingly injure the property of another if they would stop to think of their feelings if another should injure THEIR property. ”

“ If vandalism is to be the fate of America, where education, the only truly conservative element, is more diffused than in England, why should it not equally triumph in that country when the masses have gained political power, as they surely will at some time, and even speedily, if the policy inaugurated by Gladstone is to triumph? ”

“ Hence the hostility to arts and science, the tokens of refined civilization,—indiscriminate devastation of life and property perpetrated by the savage warriors, has given rise to the word "Vandalism." ”

“ Up Fort Street a number of oaks have been felled. Aside from the vandalism which would sell and cut down a single tree for a few paltry dollars, where it was no obstruction to travel, but an ornament to the street—the act of itself is a foul wrong—unwarrantable and without a particle of right to support it, either in law or equity. We cannot well conceive how that the agents of the Company could do such a scurvy trick—such an act of vandalism—except that they have been influenced to do so by a resident San Francisco landshark. ”

“ This had happened several times, and the character of the destruction was more wanton than is often the case when boys indulge in such misguided forms of practical joking. He determined to watch carefully for weeks, if necessary, and catch the culprit if he should attempt to repeat his vandalism.
As usual, one afternoon after two o’clock call-over, he went off ostensibly for his run in running drawers and shirt, his white legs and arms gleaming in the winter sunshine, as he dashed down the hill with his hounds. ”

“ When that palled she took a corkscrew and punched her apron as full of holes as a sieve.”447 A little later in life the impulse leads to more violent misdemeanours. The destruction of garden borders, smashing of furniture in public parks, and many other acts of vandalism which we prosecute, are practised by half-grown lads, and sometimes even by students.448 Some may object to calling such roughness play, but play it surely is if there is no malicious intention, as is usually the case. ”

“ Thorough in their vandalism such efforts are. Meagrely endowed with artistic taste, no nation in the world lays hands so heavy and so obliterating on the monuments of the past. The one idea apparently is to make everything clean and tidy. ”

“ Moreover, it is not a "square deal" to injure another's property while expecting one's own property to be secure. When vandalism occurs in a community it creates a general feeling of insecurity and destroys the sense of freedom.
PUBLIC PROPERTY is often more likely to suffer from vandalism than private property. Some people will mar the walls of public buildings, or make their floors filthy with expectoration, when they would not think of doing so in private buildings. ”

“ The tourist, as he notes the mutilation of the finest works of architectural skill, and the almost total destruction of exquisite sculpture and historical monuments, which he constantly encounters in these ecclesiastical buildings, finds himself giving utterance to expressions anything but flattering to the perpetrators of this vandalism. ”

“ For these people and their children there is only the street. The children occupy the street. For four or five months in the year they make life hideous, especially on Sunday, by noise and exhibition of vandalism that would disgrace the savages of any age or nation. The police acknowledge themselves powerless to prevent it. It is simply the exercise of undirected faculty which might be turned to account, but which has only noise, confusion, and street warfare for its opportunity for exercise. ”

“ Dogs chained, without food or drink. And the houses about them on fire. But the just anger of our soldiers is accompanied also by pure vandalism. In the villages, already emptied of their inhabitants, the houses are set on fire. I feel sorry for this population. If they have made use of disloyal weapons, after all, they are only defending their own country. ”

“ These features, an image of which is carried in our minds from childhood, are bound up with and are part and parcel of the feeling, so that to make any change in such a spot, to blow up the headland, for instance, as any one could do with a few shillings' worth of dynamite, or to alter and deface the surface of the adjacent land and build big houses and other ugly structures on it, would be felt by every pilgrim as an indignity, a hateful vandalism. ”

“ It is dim, too, with the pathetic dimness of a lonely old age, and one's sense of reverence is violated when one learns that the Lady Chapel was at one time tenanted by a fringe manufacturer, and the north transept used as a blacksmith's forge.
But the age of vandalism is past, and within [59] the old walls law and order are restored. The ring of the blacksmith's hammer has given place to the solemn notes of the organ, the blaze of the forge fire to the soft light of altar candles. ”

“ The enemy held the city for only a day; but in that time they did such deeds of vandalism, that even the people and the press of London cried out in indignation. The President's house, the Capitol, all (p. 601) the public buildings except the Patent Office, were burned to the ground. ”

“ So heavy are its timbers, and so faithfully were they keyed together, that in spite of neglect, the ravages of decay and frequent vandalism, yet, in all likelihood, an age will elapse ere the structure is removed by these destroying agencies now so actively at work upon it. ”

“ Fellow-travellers—it may not be too late, it may yet be possible to save these landmarks that have led us through the maze of history and Romance to the present day, where with the best intentions a vigorous young government intends to inaugurate a new era by an act of vandalism.
The power of public opinion is great. Author and Artist suggest it as a means of saving the walls of an Imperial city to their friends and fellow-travellers—and so Farewell! ”

“ Some owners are willing to allow picknickers to come to their places, provided permission is obtained beforehand, the débris removed, and no damage done to the trees and shrubs. The vandalism of certain summer visitors is hardly believable. ”

“ There is another unworthy characteristic of the Germans by which they exact the utmost penalty from non-combatants. Mr. William179 Maxwell has illustrated this form of vandalism in the following interesting article contributed to the columns of the Daily Telegraph. Apparently the same tale might be told of any village or town in France or Belgium through which the Germans advanced or retreated:—
This is a story of German rage and vengeance, not a story of mere looting. ”

“ Limestone slabs, covered with precious sculptures and inscriptions, are burnt for the sake of the lime. Decaying mounds of bricks, because they contain nitre, are carted off as manure for the fields! The following are a few instances of the vandalism which seems to be defeating the apparent intention of Providence.
The beautiful sanctuaries “erected by Amenhotep III. in the island of Elephantine, which were figured by the members of the French expedition at the end of the last century, were destroyed by the Turkish governor of Assouan in 1822.”—Professor Maspero. ”

“ It was a man, evidently belated and walking rapidly down the street. And he never dreamed that, less than forty feet away from him, a group of mischievous boys were about to commit an act of vandalism unlicensed and unwarranted even by the rules and customs of Hallowe’en. Removing the cobbler’s sign had been taking sufficiently daring liberties with the property of other people, and fastening it to Mr. ”

“ The throwing of stones in the streets has become a dangerous and destructive offence, which surely could have got to no greater height though we had had no Police but our own riding-whips and walking-sticks—the Police to which I myself appeal on these occasions. The throwing of stones at the windows of railway carriages in motion—an act of wanton wickedness with the very Arch-Fiend’s hand in it—had become a crying evil, when the railway companies forced it on Police notice. Constabular contemplation had until then been the order of the day. ”

“ Men were seized in the fields, women torn from the wheel and the distaff, and children frightened from the pleasures of play. The vandals who followed in the wake of the soldiery, looting and pillaging, burning and destroying, yet calling themselves civilized Christians, were such a band of outlaws as is seldom seen even among the most savage and barbaric races. ”

“ Various schemes were devised, by numerous individuals, to pass these barriers, and sums were, occasionally, offered to the police to be allowed to visit the ruins, but without effect. The City police kept the thieves away by their presence and activity, and the conduct of the people was, yesterday, very quiet, forming a contrast with the disorder got up by the swell mob on Thursday last. Those who viewed the ruins at a distance appeared to wear an air of melancholy, and no fire has occurred, for centuries, which has caused more universal regret. ”

“ When the police, in force, in answer to a riot-call, reached the spot a quarter of an hour later and dispersed the mob, it looked as if the sea had swept over the scene. The car was overturned and stripped to a mere broken shell; and on the ground a hundred paces away, with only a shred of bloody clothing still about it, lay the battered and mutilated trunk of what had been a man trying to make bread for his children, while a wild cry of hate and joy at the deed raged about the street. ”

“ While taking our coffee, and waiting for the final order to march, some villain, belonging to the troops stationed at Centreville, set fire to the little Episcopal chapel that stood not far from us, and was the only building remaining in the little village which pretended to any appearance of modern architecture. Those vandals who [Pg 236] follow an army, bent on nothing but destruction, are among the unavoidable evils of war, and even the most severe discipline is insufficient to effectually arrest all mischief of the kind. ”

“ It is almost our daily experience to learn that, for the sake of obtaining gold and silver, doors are burst open, walls are pierced, wretched travellers are struck down by rapacious and cruel men born to theft, sacrilege, invasion, and robbery. We see thieves seized and strung up before us, sacrilegious persons burnt alive, the limbs of robbers broken on the wheel, wars waged for the same reason, which are not only destructive to those against whom they are waged, but to those also who carry them on. ”

“ Demons of indescribable ugliness had been espied careering through the midnight streets and courts. A citizen—some said in the very act of housebreaking, but no one cared to look into trifles at such a crisis—had been seized from behind, he could not see by what, and soused in the river. A well-known receiver of stolen goods had had his shop broken open, and when he came down in the morning had found everything in ruin on the pavement. The wooden image of justice over the door of the city marshal had had the arm that held the sword bitten off. ”

“ The mob had collected and organized to the number of several hundred, and were marching through the lower part of the city, dealing destruction in their course; the houses of respectable and worthy colored citizens were broken in upon, the furniture scattered to the winds, all they possessed destroyed or plundered, and they themselves subjected to the most brutal and savage treatment. ”