THE IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

Evening Star, Issue 18050, 18 August 1922, Page 5

THE IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

A CRIME TO BREAK IT UP. I I 1 TRUE HISTORY FOR TO-MORROW. The Imperial War Museum has been found to be not suitably housed at tho Crystal Palace, chosen as a temporary ♦ homo for ihe collection of relics of the Great War, which -has been assembled with great pains and judgment and at considerable public expense. It has been - proposed to give the collection a more central and more permanent aocommoda- j tion at tho Imperial Institute, which has - at least the merit of being in the great museum zone of London. The authorities ■ of the Imperial Institute have protested, I however, that this will prevent them from | | fulfilling the purposes for which the i ! museum was founded. Objection was made | bv Sir James Allen, among others, to the proposal, on the -ground that it would limit tho space in which are displayed exhibits representing the produce, manufactures, and resources of the various dominions. Out of this controversy has : arisen a -demand that the Imperial War Museum shall be. abolished altogether. Major-general Sir Frederick Maurice, in the Observer,’ gives his reasons for regarding this demand as a blunder of tire first magnitude. It is said- (lie writes) that the Imperial j War Museum consists in tho main ot i a collection of weapons already, most of ! them, out of date; that therefore it has to-day little technical value, and will have less and less as time goes on ; that books on -the war are already available at the British Museum ; that official records and , ! maps are belter left in charge of the historical sections of tho Committee of Ini- ; I pc rial Defence; and that as a record of: the sufferings, sacrifices, and achievements of the war the thousands pf memorials erected or being erected throughout i the land 1 are more suitable and sufficient j than any museum ran ever -be. i The argument as to the technical value of the war museum can bo dismissed at once. The collection was never organised for the purpose of giving designers of battleships, guns, aeroplanes, and tank? inspiration for the creation of new and more terrible engines of destruction. 1 doubt whether such an idea ever entered the heads of Sir Martin Conway and his assistants; if it did l it was immediately' put aside. The collection will be of great technical value to the historian of tho future, but the historian is not concerned with perfecting weapons. Ihe argument I (hat the museum will serve no purpose 1 as a record of tho realities of war which cannot be met better in other ways requires _more serious attention. That argument is, I believe, in the main the outcome of a very natural but temporary phase of public opinion. It is the outcome of the same spirit which moved numbers of ex-service men throughout the land to take the guns which had beenpre- ; sented to their townships or villages, and j run them into the local pond or on to the i local dust heap. It is a demonstration from the generation which fought that it is fed up with -the war and wants no outward and visible reminders of its horrors beyond the pious memorials of the dead._ This feeling is duo to the fact that in the past war trophies have been I regarded as signs of triumph, and that both the men who fought and those- who suffered with them consider that -such triumphant display is out of place, that I it tends -to give an entirely false idea of what war really is. Wo of the generation who fought have in this matter grave responsibilities; we have to think not of ourselves, but of our children and our children’s children. Tho memorials to our dead now to be found in nearly every town, village, and parish, with their simple record- of sacrifice, will do much, but the effect of these memorials will become every year less poignant. The War Museum impresses the mind in another but not less direct .way. I have talked with numbers of people who have told mo that on seeing it they, for the first time, began to understand the nature of trench warfare on the western front. The devastated areas in France and Belgium aro -rapidly ceasing to be devastated. Within a generation tho scars of the trenches will have much the same appearance as have the Roman and British camps on Salisbury Plain. The cemeteries will remain, but they are not in our midst. To refuse to have a permanent and national memorial of the nature of tho Great War because to many of u.s it evokes memories which are terrible and terrifying is to give way to unmanly sentiment and to do a grave wrong to tho generations to come after - us.

In recent years the historian has often been accused of having presented- a false picture of war. He has concerned himself chiefly with doings of statesmen and commanders, and with deeds of courage and daring. He has told ns little of the sufferings of the peoples and of the men in the ranks, -and I have -heard it said, and with some justice, that there is piore true history of war in a few pages of Zola or of Dan dot than in Napier’s six volumes. Can wo criticise the historian of the past fairly or -hope for better things from the future historian if we shuffle on to tho scrap heap all that (reminds us of the reality of war? I have attended- many notable war memorial services, and I write with.'the memory of -the most touching rnd beautiful of them all still. very fresh—the memory of that service held last Sunday at the Cenotaph by the ex-servicemen of the British Legion, to which hundreds of men from the East End, of London, obviously in ‘ want of a good meal, had tramped to pay a simple and affecting tribute to their fallen comrades—but 1 can say that I have found a first visit to the Imperial War Museum as moving and as memorable as any of these services. It would be a crime to break up the collection of pictures -and photographs alone. Let us be thoughtful and sensible in this matter, and, before giving way to passing sentiment, consider seriously what the Imperial War Museum may mean to those who come -after us. If wo cannot afford to-day to provide it with a worthy homo the next generation may be able to do so. Let ns not, therefore, dop-rive them of a full and true record of what must be to them one of the greatest events in history.