AUSTRALIAN MEMORIAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18511, 23 March 1922, Page 6

AUSTRALIAN MEMORIAL

ON FRENCH BATTLEFIELD. (Feov Oub Own Cobbespondent.) SYDNEY, March 16. Plans have been formulated by the Prime Minister (Mr Hughes) for the erection at Villcrs-Brctonneux of a £260,000 memorial to the Australian soldiers who were engaged in the Great War on the French battlefields. A committee will shortly be appointed, consisting of an Australian architect and an English architect, with a Frenchman as chairman. The Prime Minister is anxious that France should take part in the scheme, his opinion being that the superb imagination of the Latin race, which has found expression in the Arc do Triomphe, the Pantheon, and other famous memorials. will ensure that the monument erected to commemorate Australia’s part in the war is a fitting one. As soon as the committee is appointed, designs will be called for. _ Preference will be given to Australian architects, other things being equal, but should nothing suitable be submitted in the Commonwealth, there will be no stipulation against the acceptance of a design from elsewhere. The memorial will be situated on the ridge about tw'o miles from Villers-Brctonneux itself. All that is required in the way of marble or other material for its construction will be sent from Australia. As the work of building the memorial will be spread over a period of about 10 years, only a small annual outlay will be involved. It is not expected that the Government will be called upon to pay, the total cost pf the memorial. Already the Prime Minister has received promises of substantial private support.