MUSEUM RELICS OF. LAST WAR

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 236, 6 October 1936, Page 10

MUSEUM RELICS OF. LAST WAR

relics of the last war in the air, the battered -and flimsy-seeming surviving bombers and fighters and seaplanes of the Great War, have been locked away for thirteen years, says the London "Observer.” We, who have had the words "war in the air” brandished over us for the past few years, who have watched the aeroplane become a deadly streak of armoured strength and speed, may ponder ovor these first, frail lighting ancestors onco again. The Imperial War Museum has opened its new home, the Old Bethlem Hospital in the Lambeth road. The wings of the hospital have been pulled down. Green lawns have taken their place. Its quadranglo has been covered over making wide gallories for tho world’s greatest collection of war memories, from howitzers to tho paintings pf Orpen and Sargent and Lavery. Under the dome of Old Bethlem are ranged the sixty thousand books, the quarter of a million photographs, tho maps, coins, posters, and documents which draw students and research workers from all over the world. In one corner of the long library of war volumes Stands the safe containing documents too precious to be openly displayed—the war diary, recently presented, of the Prince of Wales, now King Edward; Nurse Cavell's last let- > iter.

Much of tho collection has been seen in the cramped galleries at South Kensington during the past thirteen years. Sinco tho Imperial War Museum left Crystal Palace in 1923, however, the records of tho war in the air have been photographs and models. Now the actual aeroplanes, taken from their storehouse at Cardington, are hanging just abovo the heads of visitors to the War Museum’s new galleries. Anonymous bombers and fighters are there, representing their types. But etronger in memory are the battle-hon-oured aeroplanes, the Sopwitb Camel which Lieut. Culley was flying when he brought down a Zeppelin in the North Sea, the papery looking, fragile seaplane which was tho only British aircraft flown at the Battle of Jutland. An hour’s stroll round its galleries is Bufficient to show the design and intention of the new War Museum, to reveal the skilful' lighting “which removes all blurring of reflection, from Orpen's war portraits or Sargent’s water-colours, to appreciate the new spacing which enables the howitzers, "Mother” and "Barking Kate ” and the famous L. and E. Battery guns, and the naval gun served by Boy Cornwall, V.C., at

Famous Planes Unlocked

the battle of Jutland, to rest in their galleries without confusion. But to explore tho War Museum thoroughly would take weeks. "You could spend,” as Mr 11. Foster, tho Museum’s librarian, says, "a month of eight-hour days looking through the photograph library”—so detailed that a man could probably find the very trench,,he served in. The library of war volumes does not stop at sixty thousand. Some five hundred a year are being added by Mr Foster. Even the hundred or so grey-bound rolls of honour recording a million British war dead, three or four lines to each, are not complete. Many records have still to be made.

Tho French official war history already over fifty volumes, is not yet finished. The American and Canadian svar histories have not even been published.

Private war memoirs occupy moro space than any other type of war book, more even than tho war histories of all the combatant countries, although German regimental histories alone run to four hundred volumes. No possible documented aspect of the Great War is forgotten, from the autographed works of President Wilson and Mr Chijrehill to the adventures of the dog "Bags,” American regimental mascot, autographed with his paw.

The spaciousness of the War Museum’s new home is, however, deceptive. By no means all of the Museum’s five thousand works of art, Mr Foster is careful to point out can be shown at one time. An economic arrangement of bays allows more to be shown than in the ordinary art gallery wall arrangement, but "we have to ring the changes even now.”

.As for the future, apart from students and research workers (one German girl is at present using the Museum for her thesis on war propaganda), a different public is expected. "We hade 300,000 visitors a year at South Kensington,” says Mr Foster. "On some days we had more than the British Museum, although wo could have tucked’ ourselevs into ono of the British Museum’s corners.”

« The other day an acquaintance came to tea with me. She told mo how cultured she was, laying stress upon it. She then asked me what I was writing, and when I replied, "Oh, a sort of autobiography,” she answered, "Oh, how interesting! Whose is it?”