It is hard to feel any satisfaction at the news
that the Allies have
ordered the destruction of all memorials in Germany of the 1914-1918 war. A kind of a case, no doubt, can be made out for the action— but are war memorials in fact instigations to militarism, or only when they are German memorials. To forbid memorials of the Second German War, in view of the character of the German leaders and the way the war was waged, is incontestably right. But the village memorials of the village boys who died in field-grey thirty years ago —do they really do more harm than our own memorials of boys who died in khaki? The Germans, it is true, destroyed war memorials in France, but we are hardly called on to take them as our models in such a matter. There seems to be some suggestion that the village memorials may be excluded from the order, but why rake up 1914-1918 at all? * * * *
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