“ELGINISM.”

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 31 May 1927, Page 5

“ELGINISM.”

THE REMOVING OF RELICS

AMERICAN TOURISTS’. METHODS

This word has been much used of late in the French Parliament. It is derived from the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum, which Lord Elgin, in 1801, when Greece was under Turkish domination, obtained leave from the Sultan to transport from the Acropolis to England. The fall of the franc has enabled wealthy Americans to practise Elginism on a pretty extensive scale in France. Numerous chateaux, cloisters, stained-glass windows, gates and pillars of historic interest or antique beauty have been - carried away to America and there re-erected. Public opinion has at least compelled the French Legislature to take notice of these depredations, and both the Chamber and the Senate have recently discussed means of preventing the practice. One way, of course, would be to declare any threatened edifice an historical monument, in which case its deportation would be illegal under French law. But that would necessitate the payment of a subsidy for its upkeep, aha the Chamber did not feel justified in saddling the Government with that expense. The Senate conceived the ingenious notion of declaring a threatened building an historical monument provisionally, which would prevent its removal without incurring the payment of a subsidy—at any rate for four years,