WHERE THE DEAD MEN LIE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 49, 27 February 1901, Page 4

WHERE THE DEAD MEN LIE.

When the colonial contingents answered the Empire's call, and went forth to fight for the land which we still call "Home," they earned the gratitude not of England only, but of the Englishmen in whose land so many of them have bled and died. The. Cape colonists, to whom a year ago we were almost unknown, now think and speak of Australians and Canadians and New Zealanders as friends and brothers; and the women of South Africa are now striving to express their grateful affection for those who came from the ends of the earth to lay down their lives for the old race and the old flag. The "Guild of Loyal Women" has been constituted for the special purpose of decorating and preserving the graves of the dead soldiers in Africa, especially of those who have no friends at the Cape. Their efforts are thus especially interesting to Australians and New Zealanders. Shortly before our Queen's 'last illness, Her Majesty accepted the patronage of the Guild, and expressed strong sympathy with its work. The Government of Cape Colony is doing what it can to help the Loyal Women. All ground where those who have fallen on either side lie buried has been by Act of Parliament expropriated, and the military authorities have promised to fence in tlie soldiers' graves. The care of the graves is to be the special work of the Guild. The Loyal Women hope to raise about £5000, so as to replace with simple headstones the rough bits of wood with which their comrades have marked the resting-place of the fallen. It would be hard to devise a more effective hud more pathetic means of perpetuating the strong sense of kinship and brotherhood which now for the first time has united the whole * English race.

In Natal the colonists are manifesting the same desire to keep in affectionate remembrance the names of those who have fought in their cause. At Ladysmith, the Church of All Saints, partially destroyed in the siege, is being rebuilt, and the walls ai-e to be adorned with mural tablets in memory of all who died during the great siege, and the fighting before the town was relieved. The list of battles is long—Elandslaagte, Lombard's Kop, Wagon Hill, Vaal Krantz, Spion Kop, and many more. The work will cost nearly £3000, but the colonists are eager to raise the memorial to all who have died in the war, irrespective of creed or denomination. In many cases the sense of a common sorrow has softened the bitterness of national enmity, and the Boer dead

have been honoured with the English and the colonials. But in one striking instance, at least, this effort at reconciliation has failed. The Guild of Loyal Women ventured to adorn with flowers and wreaths the graves of ..0 Boer prisoners who had died at Woodstock, outside Capetown, and the women were nt once publicly addressed by the "South African News'' as

"ghouls," and bidden to keep their sacrilegious hands from defiling the noble dead. Hut.not even tlie rancour of fanaticism will resist for long such true charity and generosity. And for those who in these distant lands have to mourn the untimely fate of brother or of son, it will be no slight consolation to know that on dusty veldt, or barren kopje their dead are sleeping quietly, their last restingplace tended by sympathetic hands.