10th December, 1918. 



A WAR MEMORIAL FOR BELFAST. 

 By Alec Wilson, M.R.LA. 



I ventiu'e to offer to the citizens of Belfast a few suggestions 

 towards a gTcat and worthy War Memorial for this City. The 

 suddenness with which the giant conflict has come to its end has 

 to some extent taken us all aback, so that we are almost as 

 unprepared for peace as we were for war. But, I take it that 

 very shortly the civic authorities will be seeking a design for 

 something whereby to perpetuate for many centuries the share 

 which Belfast has taken in the vast struggle. 



The loved memory of the dead : the care and restoration of 

 the wounded and of the sick : the future well-being of those who, 

 having fought for us, are now soon to return to us uninjured— 

 these things cannot be separated from each other when we 

 consider the nature of a true War Memorial — nor can either of 

 them be separated from the idea of a general rebuilding of oui' 

 social organisation. 



So far as I am aware, all public memorials of war, hitherto, 

 have been limited to the honouring, by some statue, archway, or 

 other monumental group, of the gallant dead. Sometimes such a 

 monument may itself have been noble and beautiful, — (more often 

 it has been neither) — but always it has been a dead thing, a 

 species of glorified tombstone. The opportunity is before us for 

 creating a war memorial of a new and unique type : and my 

 present object is to describe a few of the more essential elements 

 in such a proposal. 



It would seem that the present moment is extraordinarily 

 opportune for a project upon these general lines. The appeal is 

 universal, to all classes and to all creeds : there is hardly a 

 family in Belfast that has not contributed of its men to our 

 fighting forces : hai'dly a house which would not respond to the 



