WAR’S HORRORS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 3 November 1925, Page 9

WAR’S HORRORS.

REALISTIC MEMORIAL. CRITICS’ COMPLAINT. LONDON, Oct. 18. The Duke of Connaught, paying a warm tribute to the heroism and devotion of gunners,, to-day unveiled London's largest war memorial, which is to the memory of 55.000 artillerymen, including men from the Dominions, in the presence of thousands of be-medalled veterans. Charles dagger, the sculptor, who was several times wounded in the war, has introduced realistically the grimness of war’s horrors and ugliness. A howitzer surmounts the pedestal, on which a frieze vividly pictures artillerymen fighting thirty types of guns, and also incidents in No Man’s Land. The latter includes the sufferings of the gassed, and shows dead men hung up on barbed wire. The most pathetic figure is that of a dead gunner, with his overcoat covering his face and his steel helmet placed on Lis breast, which occupies the' place' of honour in front of the memorial. Beneath is inscribed : “Here was the royal fellowship of death." Critics object to the memorial’s realism, which is regarded as inartistic and needlessly distressing. A pilgrimage of thousands of rela-

tives of artillerymen, laying flowers on the memorial, continued after nightfall.