August 23, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
^9 
War Memorials 
By Charles Marriott 
Memorial for Aldeburgh, Suffolk. By Gilbert Bayes. The lines are by Rupert Brooke 
r^l MONUMENTUM QVAERIS—ii the last word 
\ be given the fair interpretation of '' want " the look- 
^^ ing round becomes doubly imperative, and it should be 
done before rather than after, and under the surface 
it things as well as above. At the moment there is natural 
anxiety about the form and character of our war monuments 
and memorials, but I cannot help feeling that most of the 
anxiety is on the wrong grounds ; lest the monuments and 
memorials should not be "artistic" enough. The real danger is 
that they will be too artistic ; too much derived from art and 
not enough from conviction. You cannot get good art out of 
poor ideas, and so far as I can make out even the monumental 
purists have no better idea th^n victory, meaning victory over 
the Central Powers. At this time of day the only victory 
which is capable of monumental treatment is victory over 
ourselves. 
No, this is not an attempt to excuse Germany for making war 
or a plea for letting her down lightly from the consequences. 
On the Contrary' it is an attempt to confirm the conviction that 
Germany was and is guilty not merely in policy but in principle, 
and must therefore be utterly destroyed in her present char- 
acter and constitution. But the conviction of German guilt 
will not be secured and so rendered capable of monumental 
treatment until if is fully and clearly recognised how and to 
what extent we shared in it. If ten men are drinking to- 
gether and one of them sticks a knife into another he is justly 
blamed for not carrying his liquor like a gentleman ; but that 
■does not absolve the rest from re-considering the quality of the 
tap and whether they were wise to drink it in excess. 
What, in short, was the tap that caused the trouble ? To 
;ill appearances, and this is where the danger lay, it was a 
^ i^ry respectable brew. It is a common behef of childhood 
hat all dogs are male and all cats female ; and the generation 
lu which I belong was largely brought up in the belief that, 
broadly speaking, virtue was German and vice French. In 
the sense intended the belief was to some decree well-founded. 
' )ur '■onception of Germany implied something of the Phari- 
■e , our conception of France did include the redeeming 
i ttributcs as well as the faults of the woman who love<l much. 
We were tatigiit to admire Frederick, to regard Bismarck 
as a good, wise and great man, and German culture as worthy 
if imitation. Now until we understand that German guilt 
is not German aberration but precisely German virtue, and 
that we shared in it, and have now rooted it utterly out of 
ourselves, at any rate in intention, the object of the war 
will not be achieved and we shall not get our worthy monu- 
ment to victory. ^ 
But illustration goes further than argument, and the 
design by Mr. Eric Gill and Mr. Charles Holden, reproduced 
on the next page, is based upon a" monumental idea. It 
was designed, in a competition organised by. the Civic Arts 
Association, for a monument to be set up in the new Coimty 
Hall in memory of those of the London County Council staff 
who sacrificed their lives in the'^^ar. The subject is Christ 
driving the money-changers out of the Temple. Nothing 
could be more apt for a war monument in the municipal centre 
of a great commercial city ; or more universal and at the 
same fime more personal in its application. For the German 
virtue, that we shared to a certain extent, and that must 
be destroyed in ourselves before we can cry "Victory! " 
was and is in the last analysis nothing other than worship 
of Mammon in the Miltonic sense of " admiring more the 
riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, than aught 
divine or holy." Grant Kaiserism, Prussianism, Junkerism 
all their devilish power as instruments, they could not 
have been operative in a world that was not prepared by 
Mammon worship. 
Thase is no mtellligent person who is going to believe 
that in the twentieth century dynastic ambition could 
hurl sixty million people into war unless they saw gain 
in it. Dynastic ambition was there undoulitedh', but in 
making this war it was a tool rather than a motive. The 
Hamburg- Persian Gulf Railway scheme, methodically 
exposed in M. Cheradame's book on Pan-Germanism, 
was backed by commercial rather than royal interests. And, 
though their methods were condemned, their ambitions 
were considered perfectly respectable. The belief in their 
respectability was the brew that caused the troulile, and our 
share in the belief was our share in theTesponsibility if not 
for the war at any rate for the world conditions tliat made the 
war possible, and, so to speak. ' inevitable." As for the so- 
.:alled German " atrocities," they would be not more than 
accidental if they v^ere not so clearly implied in the mildest 
German theory of life and conduct that was ever held up to our 
