WAR TROPHIES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVI, Issue 14428, 19 July 1907, Page 6

WAR TROPHIES.

The little Petone protest against the display of Boer War trophies, raises a general question of some importance. During the progress of the Boer War, when the patriotic fervour of the nation perhaps affected its sense of perspective, there was widespread competition for the possession of captured Boer arms. The competition is not so keen now because the Boer war is ancient history. When the war was over various guns and rifles captured from the Dutch farmers were distributed among the districts which had sent regiments to the front. They were honourable trophies, no doubt, which were treasured as remembrances of hard fought fields or weary days and nights on the veldt. But circumstances have altered since 1902. The Boers are no longer our enemies. They are British subjects, and by their ready acquiescence in the new order they have won for themselves the most treasured privilege of British peoples, that of self-government under the Crown. It becomes a question, then, how far the public display of war trophies is justifiable. Nothing strikes the average visitor to India as being more absurd in these days of enlightened government than the careful preservation of mutiny memorials and monuments commemorating the subjugation of the native peoples. There is something to be said from the military point of view, it is true, for the preservation of these reminders of the failure of the mutiny. They are material warnings But there is hot even this justification for parading evidences of our triumph over the Boer arms. The thing is not neighbourly, and, whether we like it or not as individuals, we have to accept the Boers as neighbours and fellow subjects. We confess we have sufficient of the sporting spirit to wish that the Boers might have trophies of Tugelat Spion Kop, Sannas Post and the rest, but we should think them rather poor sportsmen’ if they persisted in parading those trophies before our eyes. There are appropriate ' places for the preservation of trophies cf tire kind. Tire interesting little gun which stands in Victoria Square has no sort of right to remain in those peaceful surroundings. It ought to stand in the King Edward Barracks, for - tire examination of the interested, and the edification of young volunteers. We are far from suggesting that the community ought to bo ashamed of treasuring war relics, but it ought to give some attention to consideration of place and occasion.