The Graves of the Fallen

IN view of the enormous number (over half a million) of our dead in France alone, the removal of bodies to England would be impossible, even were there a general desire for it. But the overwhelming majority of relatives are content that their kin should lie – officers and men together – in the countries that they have redeemed. The Allied nations, too, have freely given their land to our dead for ever, and that offer has been accepted by the Governments. To allow exhumation and removal in the few cases where it has been suggested would, it seemed to the Commission, be undesirable, if only on the principle of equality, and, judging from what many gallant fighters have said and written before they in their turn fell, a violation, in all but a few special cases, of the desire of the dead themselves.

Battle Memorials

MEMORIALS to commemorate the parts borne by particular armies, divisions, or regiments in campaigns and battles, such as, to name only a few, the Canadians at Ypres, the South Africans at Delville Wood, the Australians at Amiens, the British at the breaking of the Hindenburg line, will be advised upon by a fully representative military committee, and it is to be hoped that the best art of the Empire will give its services and advice in the designing of them.

Suggestions from the Public

BUT the work so far has only been blocked out, and there is room and welcome for suggestions of every kind from the public throughout the world, whose servants the Commission are. For example, it has been suggested that the entrance to individual cemeteries should carry a text or inscription, and it has been decided that monuments should be erected to the dead whose graves are unknown, of a special form which has yet to be settled. These are points, among others, upon which the Commission would be grateful for expressions of opinion.

The Progress of the Work

MEANTIME, the long and difficult business of identification and registration goes forward still on all fronts. The various architects to whose charge the cemeteries have been allotted are preparing their designs for the planting and the building required in France, and steps are being taken to prepare dignified and characteristic designs for our cemeteries in the East and elsewhere. All this can be effected in reasonable time; but there is no possibility of expediting the delivery of the headstones. More than half a million of these will be required, and at present there is not labour enough in all the world to cut, carve and letter them. While they are being made the wooden crosses will stand, and, where necessary, will be renewed; the registers will be filled and filed, and the cemeteries will be faithfully and reverently tended.

notes

1

In counting the sixty-six letters, the space between any two words must be reckoned as one letter.