National cemeteries, British -- Belgium; National cemeteries, British -- France; Soldiers' monuments
After so many years of fighting over densely populated and civilised
countries like France and Belgium, it is inevitable that there must be
single graves and groups in positions where, when the life of the land
goes forward again, they cannot be reached or tended. Some lie in what
were once town or village thoroughfares, and will be so again; others by
the side of railway stations and goods yards, houses or factories, in
arable or pasture fields, parks, gardens and the like. The objections to
leaving these graves where they are need not be dwelt upon. No
precautions save them from being encroached upon or obliterated in the
course of time. There is, moreover, a strong sentiment among all ranks
that such scattered graves look lonely, and the instinct of the Services
demands that those who fell by the wayside should be gathered in to rest
with the nearest main body of their companions. That is what the
Commission, with all due care and reverence, proposes to do.
_Removal of Bodies._
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._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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