WATERLOO.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 130, 25 July 1911, Page 7

WATERLOO.

o “An 'influential Belgian committee is being formed to celebrate, on June 18th, 1915, the hundredth anniversary of the battle of \, ateiTO,” soys rho Brussels correspondent of the “Loudon Telegraph.” “The object of the committee is not so much to glorify the great victory won by Wellington and Bliicher as to render adequate homage, regardless of nationality, to all the heroes Avho took part in the momentous battle. “With this aim in view, one of the early steps taken by the committee will 1)0 the collecting of all the bones which are even yet found in large numbers around the battlefield. These will all bo put in a vast tomb, and a monument will be erected in honour of the unidentified fallen soldiers. Allegorical statuary will be a feature of this monument. “Another memorial will probably be erected to those Belgians who, in the words of Sir Waiter Scott, ‘died bravely for a cause foreign to them.’ The site of this memorial will prooably he Qua tre ill as. “It is evident that if this movement were taken up in ca: nest, and received from donor:; m other o:>uritnes the poweifid support hurt it Aught to command, there would be an opportunity for erecting one of tiro grandest and most original memorials in the world,” writes the “Telegraph” in a leading article. “We know how battlefields have been hitherto commemorated, the contending nations, wherever possible, have erected monuments to those who died for their own country. Inscriptions have recorded the gratitute owing by all after-generations to those who make the last sacrifice for patriotism in those fierce crises which change tire fate of peoples. Statues are set up in many places to the victorious captains, and even leaders less favoured by fortune,' though not always less eminent in ability or service, Irave again and again received a sculptured tribute from generous and magnanimous hearts. “The greater Powers, as we need hardly say, are particularly inclined to exalt the fame of their own heroes, both those who fell in any famous action and those who survived. England, France, and Germany are full of monuments to the achievements of their own soldiers and sailors. None of them record in the same way their reverses and defeats, though many wise men have held that a franker and fuller dealing with the less triumphant episodes in tho annals of any country would be tho greatest of all improvements in the ordinary teaching of history.

“It has been reserved for one of tho minor nations to conceive a form of celebration humane and chivalrous enough to make a new impression upon tile world’s imagination. The Belgian Committee have put a question to themselves. Why, so far as they are concerned, should not the celebration of the Centenary of Waterloo take a form which shall Ir. ing about a meeting of nations in I omage to the valour of each other’s dead—which shall institute a great •reconciling ceremony upon tho wry field where contending aimies met in the shock of a conflict deeds’ve at that moment of the world’s main destinies? The Brussels Committee has conceived this lofty and beautiful idea. “Their object >s not to gioid’y Wellington or Bliicher, or iim part of the .Belgian regiments in that memorable light. Much iess .? tln-.r iniunß-jn to revive memories - still painful to the ‘‘Teach in recalling tie* day of battle which shattered for over the cateei of one of the greatest captains and rulers of all time, an 1 put a term to a record of military glory unparalleled in the history of any modern people. Miracle upon .miracle had the legions of France performed in that tremendous epoch. They could not resist all Europe for ever. Never was tho spirit of their race nor the genius of the Emperor wiio led them more "wonderful than when his lasi; levies of conscripts, little more than lads, baffled overwhelming odds for months in the matchless campaign of 181-1. Magnificently the Grand Army attacked until it went to wreck at sunset, when the Prussians struck into its flank. France herself claims an equal share with th<> victors in the honours won by all the gallant men on cither side who passed through that ordeal.”