THE WAR MEMORIAL

AN OLD SCHEME REVIVED

Once more the need to provide a space for the memorial of those who have deserved well of the Empire has come to the front in a manner that brooks no contradiction. Once more the over-tenanted stones of Westminster Abbey cry out that there should be added to the greatest and most lovable building in Europe some worthy annexe in which the dead of the next six centuries may lie side by side with the dead of the last, co-equal in honour and in our eternal gratitude co-equal. There is only one space in which the Abbey buildings can be extended. West, north, and east the urgent traffic of London hems in the great structure that from Henry to Henry summed up, and still sums up, the splendour and the pride of England.

To the south alone is there room and spare for this extension, and the time has come when all the land to the south of the Abbey, from the Chapter House to Wood Street, must be reclaimed from the tide of dingy brick that should never have been allowed to surge so near the pivot of all the Empire. Some years ago a beginning was made, but Mr Labouchere’s house withstood it, and the effort died out. Again and again it has been begun, and there has been some little echo. The Westminster Palace Gardens have at least been secured; but in those days there was no need at any one moment of some gigantic scheme by which to perpetuate our solemn debt those who have died for us, for all that we hold dear, for all that civilisation means. That time has now come, and the feeling that there can be no other worthy place is quick in the souls of us all. No peddling institute to commemorate these iron days; no subscriptions.

Borne on the Imperial books, the cost of this war must be extended at least a fraction of one day longer in order that those who come after may still see beside the place where the heart of the Empire throbs something that shall record our plain thanks to the men who saved us in the day of our great and bitter need. No steel and stucco work for us – it should be as Reginald Bray may have dreamed it in the old days when that most miraculous of all roofs in the world was set up over the glass walls of Henry VII’S chapel. It should be of stone, as carefully tested and chosen and tested again as any and every block in the Assuan dam. It should have foundations plunged into and through the London clay as deep as ever a caisson sank. In these days of show and glitter, let us have one solid and everlasting memorial of what the British Empire proved itself to be in the day of Armageddon.

The dainty little gardens and closes of College Street would have stood small chance and have been given small respite in the days of Edward or Henry. Why should they be respected now? In justice let there be the fullest compensation, but the day has come when the Empire submerges alike the country, the city, the parish, and the privilege.

We can build nowhere else; and these gathered peoples who have fought for us and ours intend to build. Ask any one of our Dominions if they would not instantly and as an honour bear the whole cost of this great memorial. Ask – and, for the sake of our great heritage, refuse. This is our business, and as plain, sane men we shall not hesitate. One with the memorials strung along our line in Flanders and in France; one with the scattered records of our lives laid down on the Peninsula, at Salonika, in Palestine, and along the river; one with the unrecorded graves of those who died in fair fight or by foulness on our sea-green acres; one with our story as a kingdom, a State, an Empire; let us sweep clear the southern aspect of the Abbey and do ourselves the honour of having done it to the memory of the men who have died to save the world.