BATTLEFIELD MEMORIALS.

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 5, 16 April 1920, Page 4

BATTLEFIELD MEMORIALS.

NEW ZEALAND'S MONUMENTS.

A correspondent reccntly wrote to the Wellington "Evening Post" pointing ou that while Australia was at work erecting war memorials at Poizieres, Polygon Wood, Mont St. Quentin, and "elsawhere, the Kew Zealand Government apparently was doing nothmg. Ihe writer wanted to know what ground had been secured on the battlefields where Nev,r Zealand ers fell, and what steps had been taken towards erecting Memorials. This enquiry drew a reply, from -which it is learncd that New Zealand has been allotted four sites in France and Belgium, by a Military Advisory Committee acting imder the Imperial War Graves Committee. These sites are : At the Somme (Factory Comer), Messines (Tho Sqnare), at the Gravenstafel Cross-roads, and at Le Quesnoy. Other nominated places were Anzac and Palestine, 'though it is not known what transpired in this latter respect. The Belgian Government has geherously undertaken that certain places shall be reserved for this purpose without resti'iction. The French Government has nct undertaken to aCquire the sites but will approve what is requested, and pass a decree givlng them the stat-us of public memorials, but leaving it to the committee to acquire the actual properties. No rnention ig made of a Memorial in Y pres, but all must agree that there I should be a memorial erected in that ruined city , besides one at Gravenstafel, to commemorate tne New Zealanderg who fell at Passchendaele and who gave their lives in holdirg the trencnes at Glencorse j and Polygon Woods.