"He started a kind of pact between nations for the preservation of these cultural and artistic monuments. Many nations agreed to it. I do not know exactly what the value of their agreement was because we agree to many things which we forget in times of war and trouble. We have seen recently in the late war the destruction of so many great monuments of culture in spite of all the previous agreement to protect them. Nevertheless, the fact remains that it is a tragedy for destruction to overtake these great cultural monuments of the past."