OUR SOLDIERS' GRAVES

Otago Witness, Issue 3335, 13 February 1918, Page 39

OUR SOLDIERS' GRAVES

Definite and effective steps have now been taken, writes the London Daily Telegraph, to supervise and keep in seemly order the graves of our soldiers and sailors abroad. An Imperial War Graves Commission, established under Royal charter, with this important duty before it, has just been constituted, with tho Prince of Wales as president, and with various Secretaries of State and representatives of the dominions as members. The history of this movement is interesting, because, amongst other things, it illustrates tho gradual widening of all the different issues connected with the war, and the consequent enlargement of our conceptions of Imperial responsibility. Early in the year 1915 there was appointed a Directorate of Graves Registration and Inquiries, and in December of the same year the French Government, as a result of negotiations with tin's directorate, undertook the whole cost of the provision in perpetuity of land for the graves of allied soldiers in French territory. A similar arrangement was made with Belgium. It was soon found, however, that the directorate was hardly adequate to the discharge of the functions incumbent on it. "It had to be. merged in a wider institution, and a national committee was appointed by the Prime Minister in January, 1916. Finally, in the course of the present year, the Imperial obligation resting upon the whole of the British Empire and its dominions was fully recognised as superseding all departmental functions. In March, 1917, the Prince of Wales addressed to the Prime Minister tho suggestion that a permanent commission should be established to take over the work of the national committee. This is the genesis of the present Imperial War Graves Commission, which is to undertake all the work necessary at our various battle fronts, and, indeed, looks forward to a future arrangement in which even enemy countries will bea<- their share. Not only in France and Belgium, ' but in Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and Africa, our dead are buried, and it ie the earnest desire of the nation and of the 'Empire that suitable provision should be made for the upkeep of such honoured memorials. We do not know that any more solemn task rests upon us all than this care and maintenance of the last relics of those who fought and died for ue. It is not much that we can do for our departed; and the verbal expression of our gratitude and thanks is but a poor and inadequate return for all that is their due. At least, wo can see that the places where they laid down their lives shall be kept in mind by some simple stone or cross, as a testimony to past valour and a tribute of respect and reverence from the living. We gratefully acknowledge what the French and Belgian Governments have done in placing land at our disposal. Indeed, nothing coula show a more delicate consideration for our teelinffs than the -way in which our Allies have made it easy for .ue to remember our dead and honour their deaths. ihe historian will have a good deal "to say.pi the obscure villages and the . sloping .hills and ridges which have become illustrious from the gallant deeds' that were witnessed there Hamlets unknown before have blossomed into sudden notoriety, and certain names are graven on our hearts because ot the memories, terrible and glorious, which have gathered round thorn in the remembrance of posterity. And if places hke Loos and Vimv and Ypres, Neuve Chapetle and Arras and Bapaume, and tho whole region of Posschendaclo, seem to us at home indissolubly linked with poignant associations of this desolating war, to those who have actually visited the (scenes nothing has been found mere eloquent and more tragio than the sight of the thousands of little wooden crosses raised oy pious hands in honour of our heroes.. It was at this price we sorrowfully say, that we Kained our success. Here lie fro bodies of those who fought and fell that the groat name "of Britain should not be dishonoured These wooden crosses testify to a persistent courage which no enemy could overpower, and an unparalleled hardihood in war. These slopes and plains, covered with the mute memorials of dead men, represent the other side, the melancholy side, of all that our famous exploits signify. Glory was indubitably won, but at that cost we now recognise and deplore. ( Nevertheless'we are bidden not to sorrow as those who have no hope, and it is not in terms of sadness that we chronicle feats of endurance and courage liko these. We cherish the honourable pride with which we survey the deads of thousands of young men who have deliberately sacrificed themselves in tho performance of a sacred duty—pride that Great Britain is still a tremendous force in the world's history, and that our breed of heroes has not deteriorated from all that it was capablo of in the past. The tide of battle drifts away from the scenes of some of the stoutest encounters. But behind, in many a lowly place visited by rains, swept over by tho winds, there lie the speechless records of many hopes and aspirations, fostered and nourished by our gallant sons who have now paid their last tribute to their- ideals. All grave yards in one sense seem to bring home to us the tragic lesson of the futility of our aims and the mortality of things. The insistent moral comes homo to us of the shortness of life and tho small part that any one can play in the great dramas of the world history. But that which we characterise as God's Acre makes also a very different appeal to our hearts. Human beings die, but humanity goes on. The great tides of civilisation ana progress sweep on in their resistless and death, which seems to give so final a blow to human effort, is discoveord to be only an incident or episode, a change from one form

of existence to another, and, as we hope, a more perfected one. In one of the most beautiful scenes of Maeterlinck's " Blue Bird" tha little children who have been sent by the faii-y Beryiu:i© in search of happiness explore the pust and the future, and the Kingdom of the Dead. At onemoment they find themselves in a graveyard, and the little girl grows fearful of her first contact with the great mystery of dissolution. Yet the -graveyard, with its wooden crosses and its grass-covered mounds, seems to suggest a wonderful peace, and of a sudden the tombstones disappear, to bo replaced b.v clusters of white lilies. "Where are the dead?" asks Mytyl, andjier brother answers, without hesitation: "There are no dead." What the poet suggests in an imaginative scene our experience reconstructs to serve as a solace to those who are left behind. "Of illustrious men," as the. Athenian statesman said, "the' whole earth is a, tomb," and widows and orphans and bereaved parents realise to the full the terrible meaning of such words. Yet it is also true that there are no dead. As our faith teaches us to belio-vc, they have left behind their perishable elements, .while they themselves, in a now and transfigured ' light, live not only in our memories, but in some new, strange, marvellous sphere of development and progress. We owe to the - graves of our soldiers and sailors all thai respectful and loving caro which human forethought can arrange; but we must ra-i member that they themselves, the heroeq whom we bo passionately deplore, have done their splendid work and gone to theif rest in order to teach those who live after them how best to live and to die. It is the fuller life to which all graveyards ought to point. They arc not mere symbols of destruction and decay; they are a perpetual evidence tho.t all the great thinga in life—honour and goodness and courage and justice and truth—-are immortal.