The Statue of Liberty

Cromwell Argus, Volume LXVIII, Issue 3482, 16 August 1937, Page 2

The Statue of Liberty

■> A GIFT FROM FRANCE. To stand on the deck of a great liner as she glides into Southampton, and see her draw, up alongside as gently and with the same precision as a skilful driver of a car pulls up at the kerb when his mistress goes a-shop-ping, is one of the most impressive things I know —a perfect example of man's mastery of elements and power. To lean over the rail of the same ship entering New York is more spectacular and interesting, but it conveys \ a feeling of utter helplessness. The vast ship which has carried you through heavy seas, or, maybe, passed so, majestically across calm waters, lies still, and silent.' almost a city afloat. She has to be turned in her own length, for docks are all at right angles to the river. Fussing tugs come steaming up, a bunch of them, and, with heavy-padded noses, push at her bows. Others pull hard astern. They look like worrying ants, trying to bore their way into the bowels of ht r. But they turn her, in the end, and do it well, There is just this difference. You step ashore at Southampton still with the fetding of affection for the living, beautiful thing which has carried you across. At New York you leave her with a sense of loss. The pulse has gone out of her. The ship i is dead.

The mighty Statue of Liberty, its arm outstretched, welcomes you to America. If it is day, someone is sure •to tell you that it represents the people saying- to all who come. If it is at night its fifteen-thousand-watt light will blink at you a long way off, or you may watch it as you go away. It is the figure of a woman waving "Bon voyage!"

Strangers will wonder how or why Americans ever thought of a thing like that. They didn't. It was a gift from France, and now, fifty years after its erection, they have been celebrating the anniversary by turning New York Harbor into a din of sirons and steamboat whistles, while cannon at the fort boomed out a salute of twenty-one guns. Liberty waved from her upraised arm what looked like a colored handkerchief. It was the biggest thing America could do in the way of a National flag. Here is the story of how it came to be.

In the years preceding the FrancoPrussian war there were three young men in Paris—Bartholdi, an artist; Ferdinand de Lesseps and Alexander Eiffel, engineers. All three were dreamers —dreamers of big things. War broke out with Prussia, and the three men separated to serve with the Colors until peace was declared in 1871. De Lesseps developed his great idea of the Suez Canal. Eiffel started on his design of the tower which bears his name in Paris. Bartholdi sailed for America, the land which held out hope to him of freedom —the wide and open continent which should enlighten the world. So, with his thoughts running in this way, he was inspired to draw upon his dreams of a great figure, something which should be emblematical and stand for all time as America's message to the world, towering above the water as ships approached New York. There was a little island there and an abandoned fort, a natural foundation. But hard heads in America did not dream —at least they did not then! Sentimental longings ended, as they often do, in disappointjnent. Even the President turned it down.

So poor Bartholdi sailed back home again, and as his ship went out and on he stood on deck and, passing Bedloe Island on his way, pictured the time when his romantic dream hecome a solid fact and true. With a portfolio crammed with sketches he bombarded men of means and interest in Paris. Here was a chance to pay America a compliment and express its admiration. The people of France took it up and subscribed a million francs. It was to be a present to the U.S.A. on its hundredth birthday, to be celebrated at Philadelphia Exhibition in 1876.

Now, it is one thing to dream and another to wake up. Bartholdi started with a gigantic torch and tho hand which clasped it, and that was all. He could design and build the hollow figure. That was a question of time and artistic patience, but how to hold it up was quite another matter and beyond him. By now his old friend Eiffel was well advanced with his designs for his tower, the tallest steel structure in the world. Why not appeal to him? And so between them they devised a scheme. Eiffel would design a tower of steel which would stand —alone—the buffeting of storm and time. Bartholdi would build the figure to enshroud it. The skeleton then took srape. It is an inner mast forming a spiral staircase, braced with legs like those at Blackpool and at Paris. On this the statue is placed like an extinguisher on a gigantic candle. The lift, which comes up a hundred and fifty feet from the ground level, discharges you to a floor composed of the huge steel girders on which, the tower rests.

You may ascend the spiral staircase by easy stages. There are seats at frequent intervals, and when you reach the head look out through windows in the coronet and see the sky-scrapers of New York and the great Atlantic waste. There is comfortable room for fifty people in this starred crown. The ground is three hundred feet below you. Measure your index finger. It is about four inches long. Liberty's finger is eight feet. Your face is about six inches. Hers is ten feet wide. You are, perhaps, six feet —a tall person—not a hundred and fifty-two.

You, maybe, measure thirty inches round the waist instead of thirty-five feet. Perhaps you weigh ten stones, not the two hundred and twenty-five tons of Liberty.

If you are privileged you may ascend

the arm up to the torch, if the hundred and sixty odd steps you have mounted already are not enough for you. Place a candlestick on a table; put an inverted glass over it, and you will have a good representation of this combination of marriage of the arts and sciences with engineering skill. The light has beamed for half a century, and in all that time there has been no flaw, no crack, and no corrosion. Twenty years ago there %vas an explosion nearby which might have knocked it off its perch, but it did not. It did not even cause the skirts to flutter. The statue is a monument to the imagination and skill of artists and engineers of France, who placed it there to signal "Hello, folk!" to all who pass.