IMPERIAL WAR GRAVES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 16 May 1928, Page 9

IMPERIAL WAR GRAVES.

I f,oiy,-SS2 RFG! IST EiItJKJJ. BECORD. 'iiie Imperial War Grave Commission, in its eiglith annual .report, states that the- construction of war cemeteries is nearing completion. Since tlie Commission began work ten years ago, 600,000 ■headstones, lido Crosses or Sacrifice, and 26.3 Stones of .Remembrance have been erected. liie work that remains to be done is, with minor exceptions, either in France or Belgium, where considerably more than hall of the dead are buried, or in tlie United Kingdom, where there arc nearly SO,OOO graves. The latter arc | /scattered among some 10,000 cemeteries, and it is not possible tq say when the last of the headstones will be erected. In Russia arrangements had been made, after overcoming unexampled difficulties, lor marking the graves with headstones, and setting up Cilosses of Sacrifice in two cemeteries, when diplomatic relations broke down and the work had to be suspended. .During the last seven years, in France and Belgium alone, more than 460,000 headstones have been erected. 609 cemeteries have been constructed! headstones have been placed on graves in 594 I< rencli or Belgian communal cemeteries, and the Horticultural Department has been responsible for the planting ol 63 miles of hedges, and for the sowing of 539 acres with grass. Sir JEMwwin Liutyens has still to com- ! piefce memorials to the missing in London and m France. The London memorial will be erected on Tower Hill and, will commemorate the officers, and men of tlie Mercantile Marine who lost their lives at sea.. The trench memorial, at Thiepval, will be the counterpart of the Men in Gate, a/id will bear the names, of 70,000 British missing, who fell qh the Somme battlefields. The last of the memorials to the missing to be erected in the Fia,stern theatres of \\ ai s is that of Basra, in Mesopotamia. T Jle ,Ja * st stone- that is placed on the Thiepval memorial will mark the completion of the Commission’s task of construction. Meanwhile, the organisation for permanent maintenance is rapidly takinsr slmne m>rl

tions towards the .Endowment Fund of t 0,000,00 are being received from the

participating Governments and accumulated by the trustees. Hitherto the Dominions have contributed a greater share relatively, and also' actually, than the Mother Country, but. as the cost of construction diminishes and the actual burden falling on the Mother Country decreases, her own contributions automatically increase. In accordance with the agreement with the Dominions, the first of these increases will take place in the financial year beginning in April next. Sir Fabian Ware recalls that within the last few months the Commission have lost two of their most valuable supporters. Field-Marshal Earl Haig was a Membre d‘Hoiineur of the Anglo French Committee, and Sir llobert Hudson had been for seven years a member of the Commission. It has always keen, understood that the joint War Committee of the British Bed Cross Society and Order of St. John ol' Jerusalem, who played: an active part in the original work ol the Commission, should nominate one of the unofficial members of the Commission, and Captain Lord Stanley, M.C., M.P., has therefore been appointed to succeed Sir Itobert Hudson. A table in the report headed “Death Casualties and Registered Graves,” gives the following death casualties according to country:

United Kingdom 765,437 I ndian Empire (J2 327 9 anada off’,Bl3 Australia 59,510 New Zealand 16.729 South Africa 7 130 Newfoundland 1333 Other British Possessions 50,’573 Total 1,019,882