PEACE MEMORIAL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 136, 11 June 1938, Page 13

PEACE MEMORIAL.

AN ETERNAL LIGHT.

PLAN FOR GETTYSBURG.

75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BATTLE. (By HARRISON W. FRY.) The village sleeps, a name unknown, till men With life blood stain its soil and pay the due That lifts It to eternal fame. . . . —How*. GETTYSBURG (Pa.), May 14. Atop Oak Ridge, overlooking the Gettysburg battlelield. is being erected an "Eternal Light Peace Memorial.", It will be dedicated July 3 by President Roosevelt as part of the 75th anaiversary of the battle and final joint reunion of the blue* and gray veterans— a symbol of the peace and amity which exists to-day between the people of the i nation. I Like a torch lifted by the 50,000 men I killed and wounded on this 16,000-acre I battleground, it will be their entreaty [ to the ages for peace. North-east of the town of Gettysburg, it will t-tand in a heavily wooded Oak Ridge area. Before it will lie the panorama of the three days' battle of July 1, 2, 3. To the south is Big Round Top and Little Round Top, at this time of year bathed in-a'purple-red of'the Jiidas tree like a hill washed with fresh blood. It will face in the direction of the bloody peach orchard and the wheat field. Fed by Natural Gas. Night and day a flame in a bronze j bowl atop the 40ft high memorial shaft J of Alabama limestone will be seen by' all who approach the battlefield, whether] by the Lincoln Highway or the Harris- j burg, the Carlisle or Roads. Fed by a supply of natural gas, j it will be always burning, like similar flames before the tomb of the unknown soldier in France and other countries. The memorial shaft will rise from a platform 42ft by 85ft. which is lift above the approach to the memorial.

On the principal face of the ehaft wiil be a bas-relief by Lee Lawrie, the sculptor, of two standing figures in embrace, holding a branch of laurel and a wreath. An eagle, symbolic of the nation, completes the group. Level with the bas-relief on one side of the shaft will be the inscription "An enduring light {to guide us to unity and fellowship," and on the other side the line from Lincoln's second inaugural address, "With firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right."

Inscribed on the front of the platform will be "Eternal peace in a nation united. ,.

The woodland and other plantings will form a background. The approach from North Carolina Avenue will be approximately 150 ft, consisting of two paths with a wide stretch of grass in the centre flanked by shrubbery and lowplanting.

Elaborate Programme Planned. All State Governors and descendants of General Mcade, General Lee, General Grant and General Longstreet and President Lincoln have been invited to participate in the programme of July 1. Veterans of all the ware since 18G5 have been invited to participate in iho second day'e programme, which includes a number of parados.

And as part of the effort to create a great peace on a great battlefield. President Rooserelt on Sunday, July 3. will light the Eternal Peace light and dedicate the memorial. On Independence Day there will be a military spectacle staged to music—not a re-e.«actinent of a battle.

The memorial was designed by Paul Cret, of Philadelphia, a member of the American Battle Monument* Commission, headed by General Perehing, and the Pennsylvania Battle Monument Commission, that picked sites and super vised the erection of World War memorials to the troops of the United States abroad. Mr. Cret designed the memorial to Quentin Roosevelt, aviator son of the late President Theodore Roosevelt, erected at Chamery, France, and was the architect of the Delaware River bridge that connects Philadelphia and Camden.—X.A.N.A.