THE GREAT WAR STONE

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 72, 18 December 1919, Page 12

THE GREAT WAR STONE

4 PROBLEM OF THE BATTLEFIELD CEMETERIES Two war memorial monuments, recently on view at din floral Academy, London, are in a way rivals for tlio proud honour of reproduction in every cemetery of fallen British soldiers in tlireo continents. Tlio one is Sir Reginald BlomfieM's lowering cross. The other is a .severs monolith, designed by Sir Kdwin I.ntyens, A.li.A. (famous for his Whitehall Cenotaph). This monolith, which possibly suggest.? a primeval altar, aims, as a monument, at severity, durability, univcisality. It was designed for (lie Imperial War Graves Registration Commission, and the proposal was the erection of its replica in every one of the British war cemeteries from Flanders to .Mesopotamia, i T'ho traveller, seeing from afar this stern monolith, will know in any one of two thousand different lields' that there lie Jlritisli dead. It bears no sort of emblem of creed or nationality, for in those Holds Cliris- v fian, Maliommcdnn, Jew, and sceptic' alike fought .and fell. The separate headstones in the cemeteries, of course, bear the dead man's relictions emblemcross for Christian, double triangle for •Tew, and stave for Mahommednn. The dominating monument is a memorial for ill without distinction. To Last for Centuries. The monolith is designed to face tlio centuries. Tilers is nowhere for rainwater to collect a:ul corrode, and no excrescent masonry to crumble and deface t'ho whole. Brevity, of course, was the necessary rpmlitv in the inscription. That adopted wr.s chosen by Mr. Ti-udyard Kipling— "Their name lircth for evermore." Yet simpler and mors monumental wan a rival inscription much debated— "Amen." But these, monoliths are counted on to endure down to days «'hen English may he as little understood as Sanscrit—the mas-sire severity of (he monument will tell it's own tale. There are between 1500 and 2110!) cemeteries under the Graves Commission's care, and the cost of'reproducing the monolith in each will bo nearly half a million staling. Universality. At the present moment, owing to divided counsel, Sir 1!. Blomlield's cross is beinsf erected by the commission in the foreign cemeteries, either alongside the monolith or without it. The cross (the cost of which is about the same as the monolith) is n, dignified one, a,s all the world may see, though the propriety of the emblematic sword lying by th» sacred monument may be doubted. Needless to say, a cross exposed tu weather can have no great durability (the transversa beam is sure to perish, leaving nothing but a manner of obelisk). But the objection that weighs, particularly with those who know the llnhommedan' (and also Jewish) sfecling, is that the magnificent universality attained by the stern Lutyens monolith will be lost if tho 'dominating monument.amid these battlefield graves—many of them, of course, in Asia—is the cross, an emblem .so 'hallowed by the average Englishman that- it needs" an effort of imagination to realise how little it means to the Indian soldier. The problem thus presented by the two Academy monuments has taxed the Graves Commission too heavily, and it is to bo decided by tho Cabinet.