IN 1919, THE REPAIR AND REPLACEMENT OF CHARTRES CATHEDRAL’S windows began under the leadership of Émile Brunet, chief architect, with assistance from Canon Delaporte, the cathedral’s historian. Brunet was a working architect schooled in medieval archeology and art history. Delaporte, a priest educated in history and art, was a dedicated archivist and scholar.
Others before them had repaired or restored the windows through the centuries, but in the course of some such repairs, restorers had placed a number of the refreshed panels of certain windows back in “inaccurate” positions, according to Canon Delaporte. That is, scenes and figures depicted in the stained glass had been misidentified, in part because earlier restorations had relied on the writings of one or more art historians unfamiliar with the precise literary sources or who could not identify all of the scenes on the panels before them, and so when the stained-glass was put back into the casings, the order was skewed, losing the original artists’ iconographic intention. Brunet and Delaporte took advantage of the removal of the windows during World War I to instruct workers under Brunet’s supervision to reorient or rearrange certain panels so that their scenes, in Delaporte’s view, would appear in a more “logical” position.
For example, in one window, the Charlemagne Window—number 38 by Delaporte’s ordering schema—located in the apse next to the steps leading to the Chapel of Saint Piatus of Tournai, we see a series of scenes depicting the Jerusalem crusade cycle, including a scene in which Charlemagne and Constantine speak with two bishops, one in which Constantine dreams of Charlemagne, and others depicting known priests conducting famous Masses. Over the years, certain scholars who had compared these scenes with literary sources had questioned the order of the panels, because the sequence of events depicted failed to match the historical sequence described in the sources; furthermore, they had noted, certain priests had been misidentified and certain bishops associated incorrectly with either Charlemagne or Constantine. This iconographic debate had raised complex theological issues that, as time would show, would not be settled by Delaporte’s determinations. Nevertheless, the architects who carried out restorations under Brunet appear to have begun to effect “corrections” such as Delaporte’s as a matter of practice.
During the interwar years, the French had reconstructed 1,200 churches, 1,000 factories, and 350,000 homes among the thousand villages shelled and bombed. The authorities who directed that work operated under a creed of restoration that had been evolving since the nineteenth century, during which time a school of thought led by architect Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc had aimed to “augment” a building’s appearance or character with the aim of better expressing its originally intended purpose. But in these interwar years a new line of thinking began to emerge—that architects should engage in “total preservation,” restoring structures to their original appearance, often in the name of reversing “errors” made in previous restorations.
Preserving France’s cultural heritage was a prominent concern after the destruction of World War I, and citizen advocates for the protection of France’s historic and cultural monuments came from a variety of backgrounds, including architecture, archeology, business, and the arts. Most were men, but also a few women became prominent in the cause. Many were citizen soldiers—veterans, reservists, or both. Many had served in World War I and then joined the civilian workforce. Some would rejoin the military at the outbreak of World War II and continue performing monument preservation work in uniform. They were a disparate group, and even if they were not formally trained in architecture, they committed themselves to the fight to save their national architectural treasures. Achille Carlier was one such man. Born in 1903, he had been a high schooler in Paris in 1918 when he’d seen workmen placing protective sandbags around Notre-Dame Cathedral. German aircraft and artillery had been blitzing Paris nightly, and Carlier had grown incensed when he had seen the workmen quitting their labors promptly at 5:00 p.m. even though the work was far from complete, their sandbags never reaching the higher, most ancient and precious parts of the building.
Fifteen years later, Carlier had grown into a mustachioed man with thick eyebrows, often wearing a fedora and scarf, who, though thin of build, possessed a zealous, all-out spirit and forceful energy which cast him at the front of the crusade to safeguard the Chartres stained-glass windows. He had studied at the École Française de Rome and won a Grands Prix de Rome in architecture and French Artists Medal of Honor. Early in his career, he had spent time studying Gothic architecture in Cyprus and had published on, among other things, the subject of the French character of the Cypriot landscape, arguing for it to be treated as a province of French archeology. He later maintained an office in Paris and became an ardent supporter of the preservation of French medieval monuments.
Carlier specialized in the architecture of the French Middle Ages. In the 1930s, he led a fierce fight against “interventionist” practices of the Historic Monuments Service. His numerous articles published in the interwar period defended the vision of restoration championed by John Ruskin, English art historian and prominent social thinker and philanthropist. Ruskin advocated that the British should adopt the Venetian architectural style, celebrating its “imperfection” as an essential feature of Gothic art, in contrast to the mechanical regularity of neoclassical buildings. He extolled the value of creative freedom and artistic fulfillment enjoyed by individual workers.
As an architectural historian, Carlier became a proponent of reversing what he viewed as the distortions caused by prior so-called restorations and became a harsh opponent of the school of Viollet-le-Duc. Carlier militantly defended medieval art, drawing attention to the need for the protection and careful restoration of the Gothic monuments of France. He advocated with such passion that he was seen by government officials as an adversary who spoke in exaggerations. One might argue that Carlier’s fervor and foresight played a productive role in driving the Fine Arts Administration to move ahead at a pace faster than it would have without him—and to productively tolerate more risks, such as breakage, loss, and theft of the stained-glass windows—if for no other reason than to counter the heat of the spotlight his advocacy imposed on them.
René Planchenault was another key technocrat in monument preservation. In 1923, he was a new graduate of the School of Chartres when Marceau Prou, director of his school, introduced Planchenault to Paul Léon, director of fine arts, who selected Planchenault to take over assembly of the Supplementary Inventory of Historic Monuments, a task Planchenault performed with distinction. To reward him for that work, in 1930 Minister Prou appointed Planchenault inspector of all movable objects considered historic monuments, a role in which he would serve for fifteen years. Starting in 1932, Planchenault took on another heavy burden: preparing a national plan of “mobilization” to centralized protective measures for historic monuments to be implemented in case of conflict.
Throughout the 1930s, as the French continued to repair damage done during World War I to cultural monuments, including churches, Hitler’s rise to power in Germany became a growing concern, placing increasing pressure on France’s Department of Fine Arts. Its officials, anticipating another war, hurried to finalize plans to protect French historic buildings and sites. The rise of air combat in wartime and recent advances in weaponry were forcing them to focus on averting consequences of bomb explosions near buildings, such as rumbles that could bring down unsteady buildings or blow out windows.
As early as 1923, the French government had made general plans for wartime preservation, but because of faith in France’s strong defense strategy, no specific measures were adopted. In March 1935, Germany reintegrated the Saarland into the Reich, reintroduced conscription, and reestablished the German Air Force. The French reacted by enacting a passive-defense organization that April, which established a High Commission on Civil Defense in the Ministry of the Interior to coordinate between ministries. It encouraged construction of shelters, protection of vulnerable structures, and creation of detachments of local residents to prepare for, and respond to, effects of aerial bombardments. Although planning was under way, in the view of citizens who considered Chartres Cathedral and its windows to be national treasures, the government was doing far too little.
The people of Chartres became increasingly concerned. Carlier, though a Parisian, and editor of his own quarterly publication, Les pierres de France (The stones of France), shared their passion and focused his attention on the windows of Chartres. In alliance with the Paris newspaper L’Écho de Paris, Carlier launched a campaign to spur the Fine Arts Administration to take action to save the cathedral and its windows. Carlier and the newspaper pressed dual campaigns. First, they planned to take aim at the military, hoping to force it to relocate the Chartres airbase, which threatened the destruction of the cathedral. Second, they pressed the Fine Arts Administration to create plans and assemble equipment and personnel to be able, on short—very short—notice, to remove the windows and pack and store them in a safe place before any military attack in or near Chartres.
In April, Georges Huisman, who just the year prior had been appointed director general of the Fine Arts Administration, wrote Carlier soliciting his ideas for protecting Chartres’ windows. Then, in May, the Archeological Society of Eure-et-Loir again became involved: ASEL president Charles Louis invited Carlier to present his proposal. Carlier contended that officials in the Fine Arts Administration were engaging in wishful thinking if they thought they still could apply World War I planning to successfully protect monuments from future war damage. He argued that destruction suffered by French monuments during World War I—as bad as it was—could no longer be the standard for expected wartime destruction. If a new German attack were to come—which was feeling more likely every day—the attack would be much swifter than those made in the World War I and would come initially from the air. The air base at Chartres, located less than a half mile from the cathedral, would be a prime target.
The solution, Carlier insisted, was to relocate the air base at least twelve miles away from the city, to one of the many possible sites available in the wheat field–covered plains surrounding Chartres. The editors of L’Écho de Paris joined Carlier in that argument. If the airfield were to remain where it was, he and the newspaper contended, only one solution remained: the immediate removal of the threatened windows, even in peacetime.
Chartres’ rail hub presented a second grave risk. The rail depot was only six hundred yards from the cathedral. France’s rail system was then under competitive pressure from the growth of roads and autos—which would soon lead to the nationalization of the railroads. Due to the competitive atmosphere, the rail depot could not be expected to be moved any time soon. At Chartres, two main rail lines from Paris branched off, toward Bordeaux and Brittany.
Carlier summarized his plan for the ASEL: Given the risk that the rail depot, together with the air base, would be targeted by an invading force, he was convinced that the danger to the cathedral would be imperiled immediately at the start of an invasion. So he devised a plan to protect the windows on the assumption that there would be no more than a two-hour alert before the attack.
Carlier’s plan—he called it a “study”—anticipated a number of obstacles. First, no one could count on the air base being relocated; the government must therefore plan to remove the windows from the cathedral and place them in safe storage. That plan presented its own set of challenges, including the need for equipment and trained personnel, since most trained men experienced with such work would be subject to immediate mobilization at the outbreak of fighting. So, Carlier determined, the authorities should organize a special military unit assigned to the removal operation for at least a couple of hours after the initiation of any attack. But, he proposed, until the authorities could create such a force, they should recruit a staff of nonprofessionals and young people to be trained and supervised by professionals to carry out a rapid, large-scale, almost choreographed, removal. This approach would allow a much larger workforce to be assembled quickly. He envisioned a team of 350 people, which could execute the plan within the two hours.
After all, Carlier contended, the actual work of removing the windows required, in most cases, only a limited skill level, given training and supervision. The program would call for teams trained to work together. Training, he said, should be conducted with high schoolers a couple of hours per week in lieu of physical-education classes. And Carlier determined that a new type of scaffolding would be needed—one that could be assembled quickly, yet be sturdy enough to securely hold workers simultaneously at multiple levels. The scaffolding must be collapsible so multiple sets could be prepositioned in the attics and other rooms of the cathedral and swiftly lowered into position to be erected in front of all windows. The keyhole opening at the apex of each ceiling vault above the various windows could be used, he said, to drop the equipment down using ropes for the removal of the low-lying windows. Other equipment necessary to removing the upper windows could be stored in unused rooms in the cathedral towers. That equipment could be passed through the doorways onto the balconies. Since all scaffolds would have multiple levels, separate teams of workers could occupy all levels and work simultaneously on separate windows.
Carlier suggested that the authorities designate and train a special supervisory staff—who need not be architects or building professionals—to replace the architects and building experts likely to be called up for military service in the opening hours of an attack. He advocated procurement of a large supply of custom-fitted cases to hold the removed windows, fabricated from metal, not wood, so as to be light and fireproof, with custom inserts to safely and firmly hold the panels of each window. The crates should be as small as possible to facilitate their being lowered through the keystone holes. Cases needed for larger window panels should be fitted with hinges to be foldable, small enough to pass through keystone openings. He contended that windows, once in the cases, should not be removed from the cathedral. Transport would present too great a risk to the windows. Instead, they should be first placed in the cathedral’s crypt. In the meantime, the authorities should explore the ancient excavated spaces below the crypt—sufficiently far underground to withstand bombing and fires, Carlier felt—and clear them of debris to make them available to hold the windows.
During the removal, sentries should guard all doors to keep out unnecessary personnel, even townspeople seeking refuge in the crypt in the event of a threatened attack. The guards should also enforce one-way traffic in the stairways, to maintain safety and facilitate rapid movement. Since the removal work might have to be done at night, Carlier also said blackout lights, equipped with blue bulbs to be invisible to overhead aircraft, should be positioned throughout the cathedral, powered by a petrol-fueled power generator at the cathedral, independent of the city’s electrical grid.
The architects should not perform as line workers. Instead, they should limit their role to standby in reserve and should only handle emergencies and contingencies, such as designing and directing the laying of shoring were the cathedral bombed. Architects should also refrain from ordering any new activities or directing alteration of any established plan of action for which teams would already have been trained. Those teams, Carlier insisted, must remain free to carry out the preestablished plan, and not be distracted by new directions from supervisors.
Within a few weeks of Carlier’s presentation to the Archeological Society of Eure-et-Loir, he sent the study to the director general at the Fine Arts Administration, thereafter placing unceasing pressure on the authorities to take action. He sent letters, made calls, and worked with local citizens to do the same.
The Fine Arts Administration did not respond swiftly.
After four months of no action, Carlier increased the intensity of his campaign. He published his study as a twenty-eight-page article in Les pierres de France, the entire first page of which was an aerial photo of Chartres oriented to show the cathedral virtually next to the railroad complex. He wrote,
The Cathedral of Chartres is one of the most precious works of art to be created by Humanity . . . [and] represents the pinnacle of dedicated work of many generations and a privileged time in history, one of those pieces of cultural heritage [that] is properly inestimable and [that] nothing on earth could replace. Sadly, citizens of other countries have a greater understanding of this than many French! Hence, those who come, often from far away, to contemplate this great work are met with the sad surprise of . . . its immediate neighbor . . . a military aviation camp . . . continually amid an uninterrupted fracas of engines, test flights, exercises. . . .
But it gets worse. These monuments . . . were not constructed, to all evidence, by generations equally as indifferent and unprepared to value them as ours. We owe it, however, to the future, and this transmission must be the first and most sacred of the duties of our civilization.
This impudent folly, this danger [that] the neighboring aviation camp brings headlong to the monument, is obvious to everyone. In the initial hours of first hostilities, it is one of the sites [that] will be struck by the enemy . . . and more precisely the area immediately around the cathedral will be one of the chief goals of a sudden attack. Moreover, we have only too cruelly learned, during the last war, how fiercely the enemy can target both the noncombatant population and the great masterpieces that contribute to our glory. Suppos[e], however, that the formidable bombs that fall on Chartres in a moment of surprise fall only on their strategic target. Even in this instance, where the cathedral will not be touched, without a doubt, all the stained-glass windows will have been shattered.
In November, prominent citizens of Chartres formed a new organization they called the Safeguarding French Art Society. SFA initiated a publicity campaign targeted to appeal to various French scholarly societies. Later the same month, Carlier set out to design the new kind of scaffolding that he intended to be assembled quickly and easily by minimally trained volunteers, and he presented the design to both the ASEL and the SFA. The device would consist of metal tubes connected in units that could be stacked on top of one another. Each unit could support a stack of six wood-plank work platforms, with units stackable to a height of thirty-five feet or more, which would enable a half dozen pairs of workers to operate concurrently. An attachable narrow ladder of thin metal tubing would run from bottom to top to provide access.
By early December, Carlier had fabricated a prototype of the new scaffolding and assembled it in an alleyway in town. To test for stability, he climbed it with two other men, stood atop, and posed for a photo. He made final modifications to the design and placed an order with a manufacturer to fabricate a model for testing.
He wrote to the director general of the Fine Arts Administration, requesting permission to conduct a test at the cathedral. In his letter, he explained that he’d been authorized to place the initiative under the patronage of the SFA, which would participate in financing the project. A week later, Carlier took delivery of the scaffolding prototype for final evaluation and modification and then ordered two units built. Again he wrote the director general, this time informing him that the SFA had now placed funds at his disposal to purchase the custom scaffolding and run the tests, and he promised to personally cover any overage from his own funds should the tests prove more costly than anticipated.
By the end of January, Carlier had received many inquiries about and criticisms of his published study, but none yet from the Fine Arts Administration. So on January 31 he published a twenty-five-page supplement to his study of the Chartres dilemma in Les pierres de France. In this “Supplement No. 1,” he refuted many of the criticisms lobbed at him, further explained his position, and considered further complications that had come to light: It was urgent that all installed windows be prepared for easier removal by replacing their cement anchors with malleable material. This would reduce the risk of damage to the windows in their actual removal. He further urged the authorities to detach and prepare for movement any built-in furnishings in the cathedral that might obstruct the window-removal work.
Carlier’s public-relations efforts found an audience, and both of his aims—to force peacetime relocation of the air base and rapid removal of the windows upon first word of any German invasion—gained support. In February 1936, two weeks after publication of the study supplement in Les pierres de France, reporter Anne Fouqueray wrote a story for the Paris newspaper Le Journal. In the article, she included the same aerial photo of Chartres’ proximity to the airfield that Carlier had put on the cover of the supplement. Fouqueray led her story with the ironic observation that the cathedral that had withstood fires from seven lightning strikes between 1539 and 1833 now faced growing danger from proposed expansion of an airfield, which project was awaiting the approval of the prefect. “Now,” Fouqueray wrote, “what these desires could not do, a modern projectile, in a minute, alas!, would accomplish . . . and the mere explosion of one of these formidable war engines, falling in its neighborhood, would annihilate in an instant the incomparable windows . . . which include no less than 5,400 panels of the thirteenth century.” Plying pressure on the military to relocate—or at least not expand—the air base, she went on to describe Carlier’s window-removal scheme.
On March 7, Hitler ordered German troops into the Rhineland. France at the time was suffering through a financial downturn and did not have the monetary reserves to maintain the value of the franc. Short-term loans alone prevented France from defaulting on debts and causing further decline in the value of the franc. French newspapers and public opinion, though denouncing the German aggression, with a few exceptions did not call for war. Most newspapers called for the League of Nations to use sanctions to force Germany to back down and for France to strengthen existing alliances. France’s political left opposed war. The French premier announced that French forces and resources would be at the disposal of the League of Nations as long as Britain and Italy did the same. So long as the Rhineland had remained unmilitarized, France had been secure in the knowledge that it could easily reoccupy the territory and threaten Germany’s industrial area. But Germany’s mobilization had removed this safeguard.
In Chartres, with its right-wing mayor, Raymond Gilbert—and its largely agricultural economy—the mood was likely no less polarized than in Paris and the other metropolitan areas of France. In reality, conservatives were likely no more eager for war than their liberal counterparts; yet they undoubtedly felt they had no alternative but to support the League of Nations and the agreements of the Locarno Treaties, since the only way France itself could again demilitarize the Rhineland would be to mobilize, which would be politically unpopular and cost far more than France could spend. The left, however, was on the ascendency—as the 1936 elections would show. The citizens of Chartres, however, were of one mind: townspeople of all political persuasions felt the need to act to protect the cathedral windows.
On March 9, Carlier arrived at the cathedral by truck with the two experimental scaffolds. At Carlier’s request, Jean Maunoury, architect of historic monuments in Chartres, had arranged for all the metal scaffolding to be set up in the attic above several windows that were to be removed as a test of Carlier’s procedures. Further, a pulley was to be installed in the attic ceiling to permit a rope to be used to lower equipment through the keystone opening in the vaulted ceiling 120 feet above the base of the lower windows. Maunoury also arranged for Yves Mellot, a Chartres fabricator, to install a metal sheet in the keystone opening to protect the surrounding stone from rope damage. To test the scaffolding’s functioning for the removal of a pair of high windows, they would install another pulley from the edge of the roof for a rope to reach along the outside wall through a small trapdoor eighty feet below that had been cut in the ambulatory roof near the base of the windows. They would hoist scaffolding up from below and would lower any removed windows in their cases down through the trapdoor.
Days later, Carlier put out the word for helpers to assist in the tests. He visited Mellot and asked for a team. Within two weeks local leaders created a special committee whose lone purpose was to rescue Chartres’ stained glass, which brought together nine volunteers and sent Carlier a written commitment of further support.
By March 28, Carlier had everything in place for the test removals. At the cathedral, he met the volunteers and two employees sent over from Charles and François Lorin’s master glass workshop, along with the inspector of the Fine Arts Administration and a photographer. An observer timed and documented every step of the test removals. The volunteers lowered all scaffolding parts from the attic to assemble them at the two test windows. They assembled one on the floor of the nave at the base of one of the six-by-twenty-foot lower windows to give the workers access to the entire window. They positioned the other parts beneath the trap-door for hoisting to a sill at the base of a pair of seven-by-twenty-seven-foot upper windows, where they assembled it to face the windows, resting on the five-foot-deep stone sill along the bottom edge of the windows.
One photograph taken that day shows three of the volunteers standing on their newly assembled six-layer scaffolding, perched high on the cathedral wall. They looked out like Lilliputians, dwarfed by the windows between two of the cathedral’s flying buttresses. One of the men standing on the top level grasps one of the scaffold’s vertical struts with both hands and, gazing down, looks like a reluctant high-diver questioning his resolve before his first plunge. The Lorin employees, wearing their white smocks, climbed up, chipped away the cement that secured the glass panels, removed them, and placed them in metal cases that Carlier had produced for the tests, which were then lowered through the trapdoor and shuttled to the crypt.
That same day, the team ran a separate test, employing in place of the scaffolding a two-man enclosed platform atop a mobile hand-cranked telescoping crane on wheels. They invited the Lorin employees to climb inside to be hoisted up so they could remove a lower window and then repeating the process on a higher window. For each test, the workers removed the windows and packed them in the cases that were then lowered to the floor and subsequently moved to the crypt. After the tests, all of the windows were reinstalled.
The tests having been completed, Yves Mellot assured the Fine Arts Administration that the people of Chartres would provide any support necessary to save the cathedral. Carlier and Chartres’ stained-glass-rescue committee deferred to the administration for evaluation of the test results. Carlier followed with a letter to the administration director, relinquishing all rights he might have to the scaffold design.
But there was tension. The tests had revealed new risks and showed that the time required to remove the windows was four times that estimated by Carlier.
Within a week, the Historic Monuments Commission decided—based on recommendations in a report by Eugéne Rattier, chief architect and inspector general for France’s Fine Arts Administration—that the administration would employ Carlier’s scaffolding for the upper windows and the telescoping platform for the lower windows. It would order twenty such scaffolds for the upper windows and four telescoping platforms for the lower windows. The Historic Monuments Commission appointed Rattier and Émile Brunet to study arrangements for the cases to hold the windows.
The next week, in mid-April, the committee concerning itself with Chartres’ stained glass sent the director general of the Fine Arts Administration a set of resolutions the committee had passed, endorsing Carlier’s resolve to ensure that the stained glass would be removed within the two hours of word of any attack and imploring the director general to plan for “the rapid and simultaneous removal of all windows” because that “enormous task . . . far surpasses the capabilities offered by existing professional businesses” and that without volunteer assistance and advance preparation by the local population, the administration would be “caught completely off guard.” The Chartres committee promised also to install a set of stained-glass windows at a separate designated location on which to promptly train teams of volunteers—who were not (within the initial hours of the war) subject to being mobilized—to pass a test of skill to be judged by the Fine Arts Administration.
Two weeks later, Carlier fretted that he’d not heard any decision from the Fine Arts Administration’s director general, so he published in a second supplement to his Chartres study in Les pierres de France: “Supplement No. 2” ran some thirty-four pages and also included a full-page aerial photo showing Chartres Cathedral’s proximity to the military air base. He included a copy of his letter to the director general of January 24, 1936, and another letter sent to the director general on April 17 from the Chartres’ stained-glass-rescue committee, asserting that “any stained-glass still in place two hours after the opening of hostilities will inevitably and irretrievably be destroyed by the explosions produced on the nearby airfield.” That letter continued,
It would be criminal to resign oneself to the loss of such an inestimable and irreplaceable treasure, the unique testimony of an incomparable spiritual exhalation, bequeathed from the past to the future and to which our age has the even-more sacred and formidable duty of conservation. . . .
In the certainty that you will appreciate and make full use of all the possibilities of collaboration that are being spontaneously and voluntarily offered, we assure you, Mr. Director General, of our very strong attachment to the Cathedral of Chartres.
Carlier also reported that forty-two newspapers had participated in his publicity campaign in France and abroad. He wrote that with this publication he hoped to inform anyone interested in Chartres Cathedral’s preservation of his progress. But his ardent and sustained efforts to raise public awareness to garner support and funds for the project may have gotten under the skin of the Fine Arts Administration’s staff, concluding the piece as follows:
The administration could do nothing, we said, to save the windows of Chartres in less than two hours without the immediate assistance of the population. Therefore, we address . . . a question . . . to the administration: TO WHAT SIGNAL, FROM WHAT EVENT, WILL WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO PROCEED WITH THE EFFECTIVE REMOVAL OF THE STAINED GLASS? Will it only be the alert, that is, the entry into the war? Could it not be an earlier stage, the decree of mobilization, for example, supposing that it precedes heavy attack?
For it is quite evident that, from the decree of mobilization, for example, telephone and telegraph lines will be exclusively given over to the service of the military authority and that OUR UNHAPPY OFFICE OF FINE ARTS, so often considered secondary in our era among the State machine, WILL THEN BE MATERIALLY UNABLE TO MAKE KNOWN ANY ORDERS. It must therefore be established in advance that this or that next step of tension automatically leads to the implementation of a particular safeguard measure. . . .
It is now well known that on 28 March, during the tests, one of the most directly responsible officials, questioned in this vein, replied: “The question is solely a matter for the Fine Arts Administration, and the city does not need to worry about it; the Fine Arts Administration will send specialists from Paris.” To do what? To make an inventory? To discover that there will no longer be any stained glass in the windows and that everything will have shattered?
So to those who think that they have to wait for orders, one can only respond by admonishing them to wait for nothing and no one before gathering, readying, and preparing themselves.
It would not be surprising if the administrators and staff had taken umbrage at his tone.
The men and women of the Fine Arts Administration may not have communicated their decisions and actions to Carlier or to the committee dedicated to saving Chartres’ stained glass, but, as we’ll see, they had already been moving forward with the project—even if many of their decisions conflicted with Carlier’s notions of how to proceed. But would their planning move quickly enough to save the windows before war struck?