WAR GRAVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 237, 7 October 1930, Page 6

WAR GRAVES.

American war dead in France lie in beautiful, tranquil cemeteries, each with a marble tombstone; British and French graves are equally well taken care of, grouped around some commemorative monument. Only the German graves with their weather-eaten wooden crosses, unchanged since the day when they were first put up, are not looked after. As far as Belgium is concerned this is going to change. A gifted German sculptress, Frau Kaethc Kilhvitz, has been asked to erect a monument near Langemarck. where that impetuous regiment of young German students who rushed into battle without sufficient training, lies in the mud of Flanders these many years One of her own eons lies buried there. The monument will show two persons, a father and a mother, bent over a grave. Frau Killwitz is being criticised because her monument will not sufficiently express a protest against war. But she says she merely wanted to express the real presence of parents near their children. They are seeking some consolation in being near them. To these parents, forever crushed by grief, there is no protest; all they can do is to be silent. Perhaps there lies in the conception of Frau Killwitz a very strong protest; the old ibent over the graves of the young in an unending night of sorrow which no dawn will follow.