WAR MEMORIALS.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 202, 26 August 1919, Page 4

WAR MEMORIALS.

The Mt. Eden Borough Council, we arc glad to sec, has decided to join the movement for a central war memorial, and we hope its example will influence those other suburban bodies that are standing out for local schemes. We are sorry, however, that the dock site should commend iteclf to the Mt. Eden Council, and equally sorry that in the treatment of the site, the council should be tempted to stray into the wood of characterless nnd inappropriate utilitarianism. It is suggested that a resting-place and ehelter with a bandstand and drinking fountain should be considered. Wo suppose there arc artistic bandstands, but we know of none in New Zealand. A community may consider itself fortunate if its iband-stand does not look like a grimy wedding cake. And it might be possible to erect a beautiful shelter on the dock site, but what are the odds that it would lack distinction? But, apart altogether from the basic objections to the use of the dock site, which we hold to be quite the wrong place for a memorial, what has a sheltcr-drinking-fountain-baniistand sciierue got to do with the war? Ten years henfe, when Aucklandcrs strolled along to this point on a summer evening to listen to a band playing the latest American ragtime, what reminder would they receive of the fact that all these erections were r.nppoeed to commemorate the victory won in 1018 and the deeds of the men who won it? Mount Albert, bet-ides declining to help to provide the central memorial, proposing to make :>. similar mistake. Municipal buildings, which will include a library and a memorial to the fallen, are the choice of tlic Council. With all due respect, we ask the Council what right it lias to put up as a war memorial something that has no connection whatever with the war, and will not bo a reminder of the war, and something which, if there had been no war, the district would have required. Municipal buildings are among the lost things that should be chosen ac war memorials. Especially in small communities they are generally stodgy in design and dull in association. If this proposal is carried out Mount Albert will not have a war memorial; it will simply have whnt every other borough has—a home for itsj governing body. The building's significance as a war memorial will be lost in the dull prosaic fact that it is the place where you pay you r rates. Not in this j way will the memory of the dead be l adequately honoured and the imagination of generation after generation stirred.