A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
THE question of a memorial to President Roosevelt in Westminster Abbey is, I gather, still unsettled. Though I have a far greater admiration for that great man than many of his fellow-countrymen profess I am bound to say that I regard the proposal with misgiving. The fact that a statue of the President is to be erected in Grosvenor Square is not in itself an argument against a more modest memorial somewhere at Westminster, and I am not afraid of making new precedents where there is a strong case for it. But the Abbey Church of Westminster enshrines English and purely English (or, if you will, British) history, and the erection within its walls of a memorial to the head of a foreign State would be a departure which might well lead to serious embarrassment in the future. A memorial within the Abbey precincts is another matter. There is already a plaque to the memory of another great American, Walter Hines Page in the entrance to the Chapter House, which though within the precincts and part of the Abbey is not part of the Church itself. To commemorate a statesman like President Roosevelt here would be peculiarly appropriate, since it was in the Chapter House that the House of Commons met for two hundred years. Here therefore, the political and the ecclesiastical are most fittingly blended. This seems a most fitting—indeed the most fitting—site for the memorial.
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