11 JANUARY 1919, Page 14

WINCHESTER COLLEGE MEMORIAL (To THE EDITOR or THE " .STECIETOR."3

Sia,—The general body of Old Wykehamiste ehould be grateful to you for the publication of the letters on this subject which have appeared in your columns. If the writer of the letter in the Spectator of December 28th is correct in assuming that "the next step will be to obtain the opinion of Wykehamiats in general," then no great harm will have been done, but I think that I am very probably voicing a large body of opinion If I say that the way in which the authoritlea at Winchester have set about the initiation of this memorial is most unfor- innate. I belong to a generation which must have supplied many of those who will be commemorated by the memorial. I know of others whose relatives are among the fallen. I received no notice of the proposal at all. Others are in the same case. I suppose the vast majority of serving soldiers were abroad when this project woe mooted and when the meeting was held. We all of no remember that the appalling " improvement " of Winchester College Chapel was carried out without any con- sultation of the general body of Wykehamiste, who were horri- fied at it. The Quingenterrary buildings have always to most of us seemed hopelessly incompatible in appearance with their peerless surroundings. Before anything further is done at Winchester a real effort should be made to discover the ideas of the general body of Wykehamists of all generations, but specially of those later generations which supplie.1 the men who fought and died. Personally I agree with Mr. Irving in thinking that the proposal to make a main thoroughfare rd the cloister which is to form the main commemorative part of the new buildings is a mistake. I should like to see this cloister surrounding a garden, and the garden a place of peace and beauty, accem to which should be tree to the school, in contra- distinction to the manner in which, in my day at all events, the Warden's garden, one of the most beautiful places in Win- chester, was inaccessible to the vast majority of those at the