AN ARMY IN STONE

Waipa Post, Volume 37, Issue 2179, 5 July 1928, Page 6

AN ARMY IN STONE

CARVED OUT OF A MOUNTAIN. A memorial designed to outlast the Pyramids and the Sphinx has just bean opened at Georgia on the conclusion of the first stage of the work, writes Wilson Midgley in the Daily News. It is a tribute to Robert E. Lee and the other soldiers of the Southern States, and it is carved in the face of a mountain which in itself is a natural phenomenon. Mayor Walker of New York, when he formally accepted the monument for the nation, said the monument, and the memory of Lee would remain when all other monuments on earth were dust. Stone Mountain rises from a nlnm in Georgia to a height of 900 feet, and is nine miles in circumference.

The sculptured face is perpendicular, without even a tuft of grass upon it, and geologists say it will not-wear away a quarter of an inch in a thousand years.

At present a colossal, figure of Lee only has been roughly finished. A button-hole is 20 inches long. The stars on his collar 18 inches across. His sword, if detached, would weigh 60 tons. The whole of the Sphinx would go inside his head. From his head to his horse's hoofs is 130 feet. The horse Traveller will be 175 feet long. Though Lee is to be the figure, a long, procession, including 1,300 figures will follow him in a band half a mile around the face of the mountain.

The head of Lee was drilled out by 40 men working with pneumatic drills,lowered from the top of the mountain. Swung in cradles, they use giant compasses to take the measurements from the sculptor's models. He has a telephone out in the plain with telephone connections to the working posts. The inscription has not yet been decided on, nor the four Southern generals who shall ride with Lee. Unhappily, in making this monument for eternity, very temporal emotions have been allowed to creep in. The present head is not the first to be carved. Below it lie tons of granite broken into pieces by the explosion which blasted them from the face of the rock. This was the work of Gutzon Borglum, the first sculptor to be appointed to the work. A rival faction among the promoters of the scheme secured his. dismissal!, and while lawsuits were being carried on he broke his model. His supporters have protested to the last moment against the destruction of his work. They have secured from the original owner of the mountain, who donated it on condition that the monument should be made within twelve years the reversion of his rights, and they claim that as only one head has been really finished in that period, they are the owners of the mountain, and have the right to destroy the present work, which is part of the design of Mr Augustus Lukeman, a much more conventional artist than Mr Borglum, whose work is nationally known throughout America.

While the lawsuits continue the work will go on. It is estimated that the main figures will be finished by the end of 1929 at a cost of £50,000.