SACRED ROAD OF WAR.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 14448, 7 November 1917, Page 5

SACRED ROAD OF WAR.

ALLIES' NOBLE MEMORIAL TO FALLEN SOLDIERS. '

VA Sacred Road from' the itfoh-ii- Sea Yo Alsace* This, according "to Mr. E. Temple, Thurston, , writing m the Sunday Pictorial, is 'te be the great Allied memorial to the glorious dead 'who have fallen,; m defence of civilisation. "Down all that line,, 400 miles, from Alsace. to the Flemish coast," says Mr." Thurston, ;V where for the last two years' arid hiore •the', tide of battle, has broken beyond recognition the face of the' earth, a road.- a? sacred road, is to be* built. Planted on either, side , with of trees it is to grow year by year,, century by century, in*UYan undying and perpetual monument which. Nature , herself shall raise m everlasting commemoration of the war. All those devastated., villages through which, it will, make', its way are 'to be .preserved for all time' as ■they, exist to-day. A veritable street of [Pompeii it will' be, but a. street'4oo, miles long and a street, not of death,, but. of | j ever-living memory. Everywhere •. m those woods at either side, the -graves aiid - cemeteries of. graves of." the men. who have fallen are scrupulously and,beautifully to be preserved. For miles the forest may stretch without interruption, and then through a break m the trees, a ruined village will be seen, a gutted church, a broken Calvary,, a small white wooden cross. The whole majesty, the whole terror, the wlible sacrifice, and the whole; abomination of war will for all time , be kept m monument there; for 'the eyes of all the world and air the future , generations to look upon. The sacrilege and the. barbarism of Germany will never be forgotten so long ■as those forests stand, and year by year they will grow m beauty and m strength as Nature, the greatest architect, builds up this monument of ceaseless memory to the dead. Preparations are already being made for the beginning of the scheme. One million young trees have even now, been collected m the various central nurseries."