THE "VIA SACRA."
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR...I
SIR,—I read with much interest your article on the Memorial Road which might be made between the trenches in No-Man's-Land. The idea is a captivating one, but, I fear, quite impracticable for the following reasons
(1) All that country is already well supplied with roads, and where military needs required, our armies, and the Germans' too I dare say, made new ones. So far as I could see, the country does not require a new main road.
(2) When the war ends the incalculable burden of repairing and rebuilding towns, villages, farmsteads, he., will lie on France and Belgium—Germany's share is problematic—and it is very unlikely that money, a vast sum of money, will be spared for a memorial which has in it more of sentiment than utility. So far as this country is concerned the load laid on her will be enough without a share in so great an anterprise.
(3) One cannot live in France or Flanders without discovering how valuable land is there. I am interested in agriculture, and the system of intensive cultivation wakened my greatest admiration. I never saw better results achieved nor fuller use made of the last available loot of soil. For a great part of the entire length the line of trenches runs through rich agricultural land, and again and again I heard young Scotsmen lamenting the waste of land with which . we have little here to compare. You speak of planting with shrubs and trees all the space between the lines not needed for the road. _Have you tried to reckon how many thousand acres of arable land would 'thus be lost to food production ? It is difficult to believe that the 'Governments of these countries would dream of sacrificing so much land, which they can ill spare, for a road that is not required. I imagine that when the war is over the whole energy of the people will be directed to obliterating its traces, filling in trenches and shell-holes and mine craters, replanting the woods which have been destroyed, and as far as possible, and as quickly as may be, restoring the face of the country to bring it again under the plough. Some parts of the lino may be left as a memorial, but I think practical peoples like the French and Belgians will want to see their country, now so desolate and torn, brought back to its former state.
(4) Such a road as you desire could not follow in a great many places the dead ground, and would need to make wide detours quite away from the trench line, thus losing its value as regards sentiment.
(5) Is it worth while to erect such memorials as you speak of along that long front ? In a little while it will not matter what particular unit held a particular spot, and even now it would be impossible to seed a place which has not been held by many different units. All along that front are little cemeteries where our gallant dead are sleeping, and if these are properly and worthily cared for, what better memorial could you find for thoso who "counted not their lives dear to themselves," and made the great sacrifice ? Those who fight and survive will have little difficulty in identifying the spots where they helped in the greet struggle, when in happier times they revisit the scones of their service. For myself, there are not a few places on which I would never desire to look again, were it not that I fain would stand beside the graves ol gallant comrades and true friend's who fought and fell and are resting
Late Chaplain with 2nd Cameron HighlaniPr4 and 1st Argyle and Sutherland Highland.
Manse of Applegarth, Lockerbie, Dumfriesshire.
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