STATUE DISAPPEARS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 104, 4 May 1937, Page 10

STATUE DISAPPEARS

REMOVAL AT NIGHT

SEQUEL TO CONTROVERSY

MESSAGE LEFT ON THE BASE

(From "The Post's" Representattve.) SYDNEY, April 21.

A fierce controversy concerning the site of a South African war memorial in the prosperous town of Lismore, in the north coast district of New South Wales, has'resulted in the mysterious disappearance of a 4cwt life-size bronze figure of a soldier from the memorial. Police have been trying hard to find it, and the Lismore Council is worried, but townspeople expect to see it one morning installed on the street site from which the council had it removed to a park."

The monument was erected in 1902 at the intersection of two streets, and .the council's decision last March to remove it to a park was the second effort to change the site, a similar move five years ago being stopped by protests at public meetings. Since then traffic congestion has become more serious. The council decided that the memorial's position in the traffic stream was dangerous to motorists and removed it to the park, despite vehement protests of townspeople. Veterans claim that the speed with which the removal was carried out gave them no chance of protest.

The figure disappeared- from its new site in the park one night between 10 o'clock and dawn. There were indications that a lorry had been backed near the footpath around the park, and that sheer legs had been used to facilitate the removal of the statue. At the base of the monument was a message roughly scrawled on a piece of paper, reading: "Says the monument, I cannot rest. I give up my lancer with pride. Our friends will care for me, and restore him to me when I wish. Why all this worry, why all this work, which makes good friends bad? Oh, do take me back, I miss those little prayers and those little signals of respect. That tree should be growing here. We respect the dead."

The message appeared to have been written with the end of a stick dipped in ink, and, at the bottom of the paper, in red ink, was written: "Leave this at the base of the monument." The portion of the message dealing with "little prayers" referred to a statement by veterans that one woman relative of a man killed in the South African campaign said a little prayer by the monument every day. When the council placed the.monument in the park, and made provision for a garden; around its base, it was necessary to remove one of the five trees planted on the, day of the celebration of the late King George V's Jubilee, the trees being planted to commemorate the King and each of his four son's. The tree removed was the one planted in Edward VIII's name, and it was to this tree that the message referred.

The police do not share the belief that the statue will reappear as mysteriously as it went, nor do they give credence to a report that the monument will be found suspended on a rope at the bottom of the river. They believe that a fast motor lorry was used to take the figure away. They do not expect to find it in Lismore, and the search: has been widened to distant country centres.