War Damage In Britain-Much Irreparable

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 251, 23 October 1944, Page 4

War Damage In Britain-Much Irreparable

(By CYRANO.)

ON his return to America the other day the Director of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art said that "Europe's historic landmarks and works of art have escaped with little damage, but Britain's churches, museums, monuments ana libraries, have suffered severely. Some people may be surprised at this. They may have thought that Britain, despite the bombing she has suffered, had got off more lightly than continental countries, for the reason that she has not been actually invaded. We must bear in mind, however, that Britain is only half the size of Germany and less than half that of France,, and that she has been subjected to a bombardment must less discriminating than that which the Allies have directed at Germany and occupied countries. Moreover France, which is studded with historical monuments and works of art, was quickly overcome, and, reckoning from D Day, was quickly liberated. Indeed in the German invasion, so it is said, some towns were surrendered without resistance so that they might be spared damage.

Aiicfent Destruction In degree of destruction* modern civilisation is going back to ancient times, when it was a common practice to wipe out conquered towns. The town might be built again on the ruins, and excavators to-day can distinguish between these layers and reconstruct the past. The marks of fire on stones tens of centuries ago can still be seen. So fell Cnossus, the capital of Crete, centre of an advanced civilisation, and Troy. Centuries later a Roman commander remembered the fate of Troy as he watched Carthage burn, and the smcke from Troy, sacked by the pitiless Greeks, still rises before the eyes of men. But while the ancients had the will to destroy, their means were far inferior to ours. They had no explosives. Fire did not destroy stone, and, as the excavations in Crete show, enough could survive to enable our age to reconstruct a remote culture in a good deal of detail. Cnossus had a sanitary system far superior to anything in Britain until recent times, but, as a Scotsman said after seeing the excavations, the moral of Cnossus is that good plumbing will not save a civilisation.

Books and pictures, however, suffered heavily. There are great gaps in the literature of the past. At the siege of Corinth the historian Polybius saw Roman soldiers using a famous picture to throw dice on. A few days ago it was reported that German soldiers had treated Italian masterpieces with similar indifference. Statuary was tougher, but it could be broken up for cement, or melted down. The best-known statue of the ancient world, the Venus de Milo, was uncovered by a ploughman- in the Aegean island that bears her name. No one knows her history, and the use to which she was putting her lost hands can only be conjectured.

Barbarians and Christians Down the ages runs a tragic line of fire and pillage. The barbarians glutted their greed and ire* on many a city, but sometimes Christians were not far behind. When Louis XIV. devastated the Palatinate of the Rhine in 1688, "the flames went up from every market-place, every hamlet, every parish church, every country seat. . . . No respect was shown to palaces, to temples, to monasteries, to infirmaries, to heautiful works of art, to monuments of the illustrious dead." -The fate of cities, however, was often settled in field battles, and if it came to a siege, the power of artillery was very slight compared to what it is to-day.

It was gunpowder that wrecked the Parthenon at Athens, the most famous of Greek buildings. It survived more or less in its entiretj' until 1687, when the Venetians lobbed a bomb into it, and exploded the Turks' magazine inside. The Lord Elgin, who took the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon and other ruins of the Acropolis, was much criticised, but it can hardly be disputed that these relics have been safer in England, and accessible to a much larger public.

Britain's Advantage One would like to know more of this , American expert's conclusions about Europe. Did he go to Russia? I should say that in systematic devastation Russia has suffered more than any other of the Allies. Large numbers of churches, libraries and historical monuments have been destroyed, many of them deliberately by the enemy. Russians will long remember, together with the fate of so many of their compatriots, the desecration of Tolstoi's home.

One reason why Britain is so rich in beautiful old buildings and works pi art is that she was so long spared the destruction of war on her own soil. William the Conqueror was not a destroyer; besides, nearly all the best monuments date after him. The number. of churches in which Cromwell stabled his horses seem about as numerous and widely separated as the beds Elizabeth slept in, but the Civil War did little damage to buildings and "their contents. William the Third came bloodlessly. The result of this freedom from war was to preserve fabrics and records. The worst enemy was ignorance and indifference. Stones of ruined abbeys were taken to build houses, and as late as this . century it would have been legally possible . for the owner of Stonehenge to sell that relic to a foreign buyer for removal.

No Longer an Island Had English soil been scarred by the to-and-fro of battle, like certain foreign areas, there would be fewer beautiful old villages, "haunts of ancient peace." Everything has to be paid for, however, and the price in Britain was a failure to realise how closely the national fortunes were bound up with those of the less favoured Continent. Pride in separation and isolation cost the country dearly. Now, as Mr. Wickham Steed pointed out the other day, this state of mind has been blown to bits by the big German guns firing on Dover from across the Channel. The flying bomb has had a similar effect.

In America there has been this important reaction, that not only has sympathy with England been deepened, but men are thinking of the possibility that in the future a body of scientists somewhere may develop another and worse device for the service of evil. The need for joint watchfulness to see that this does not happen has been underlined. So Hitler's secret weapon has done more than make the British more resolved than ever to deal with him faithfully; it has strengthened American resolution to help to keep the world peace in the future.