MOVEMENT IN SYDNEY

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 93, 22 April 1925, Page 9

MOVEMENT IN SYDNEY

CENOTAPH IN MARTIN PLACE

(FROM ODR OWN COKEESPONDINT.J

SYDNEY, 16th April. The State Executive of the Returned Sailors and-Soldiers' League, with the backing of an influential committee, has launched a campaign for the erection of a cenotaph in Martin place, in the centre of the city. About £60,000 has at various times been subscribed in New South Wales for a National War Memorial Fund; but whether the cenotaph will be supplementary to this memorial, and what is precisely the position of the ■™ to-day, no one seems to know. When the memorial fund was last before the public there was a spirited difference of opinion, one section urging a utilitarian memorial, on the ground that the money was collected for the specific purpose of erecting a memorial hall,"and the other section of the community ap-, pealing for a purely idealistic memorial, on the ground that a monument of symbolic character would have a more inspiring effect than a memorial hall, however serviceable it might be. The question of a cenotaph in Martin place, in the very heart of Sydney, will probably also give rise to two schools of opinion. There will inevitably be those who will contend that while thousands of people will be able to pay a passing glimpse at a cenotaph in the heart of the city, its idealistic purpose, as an inspiring symbol, will-be lost in an atmosphere of constant noise and movement, and that its influence, as a memorial of self-sacrifice, as a symbol of a nation's effort, and as an inspiration to generations to come, could be more effectively assured in a spot of comparative quiet, as in one of the principal parks. These psychological aspects apart, however, a cenotaph of distinctive and inspiring design will adorn a city now poor in commanding statuary.