Content note: Repeats First World War atrocity stories, including invented ones, and their wording. This object is shown as it was published. Why
At the Peace Conference the Belgian representatives claimed the wings of Dietrick Bouts’s altar-piece in compensation for the famous altar-piece from Louvain, a valuable work of art which they declared had been wantonly thrown into the flames of the burning library by a German officer. The story was accepted and the two pictures transferred. But it was not true.
The New Statesman of April 12, 1924, gives the facts :
The Dietrick Bouts altar-piece was not thrown into the flames by the Germans or by anyone else. The picture is still in existence at Louvain, perfectly intact, and the Germans were not its destroyers but its preservers. A German officer saved it from the flames and gave it to the burgomaster, who had it taken for safe custody to the vaults of the Town Hall and walled in there. It has been duly unwalled. . . .
Falsehood in War-Time, Arthur Ponsonby. Published in the United Kingdom in 1928, more than 95 years ago, so in the public domain in the United States. Ponsonby died in 1946, so the text is also in the public domain in countries that count the author's life plus 70 years. Provenance and rights.