Policy.—One of the first acts of the commission was to lay down as a guiding principle that the graves of all ranks should be treated on a basis of absolute equality. With this principle as a foundation, the commission, desiring to have an impartial opinion, invited Sir Frederick Kenyon, director of the British Museum, to consult representatives of the army, religious bodies and others interested and to report as to how the commission could discharge their responsibilities with the greatest satisfaction to all concerned. His recommendations, which were adopted by the commission, were briefly as follows : (I) The erection of uniform headstones over all war graves. (2) The erection of two central monuments in each cemetery where possible.
The principal architects entrusted with the preparation of de signs were Sir Edwin Lutyens, Sir Reginald Blomfield, Mr. Her bert Baker, Sir Robert Lorimer, Sir John Burnet, Mr. Charles Holden and Mr. Edward Warren. The headstones are 2ft. 8in. in height, 'ft. Sin. in breadth and Sin. in thickness. Each stone bears at the top the badge of the regiment or unit. Then follow the military details with the name of the deceased and the date of his death, below which is carved the symbol of his faith, while at the foot of the stone is engraved a personal inscription chosen by the next-of-kin. Of the two central monuments the great altar like stone of remembrance, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, bears the inscription chosen by Rudyard Kipling, "Their name liveth for evermore." The other memorial is the great cross of sacrifice designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield, to the shaft of which is fixed a crusader's sword of bronze.
In addition to the marking and care of the graves, the corn mission was entrusted with the erection of memorials to record the names—more than 300,00o in number—of those sailors and soldiers who have no known graves. Several memorials of this nature are completed, including the three connected with the Navy, which stand on prominent sites at Portsmouth, Chatham and Plymouth, the three ports intimately connected throughout Britain's naval history with the sea service; the Gallipoli memorial at Cape Helles; the Salonika memorial at Lake Doiran; the memorial at Jerusalem in Palestine; the Indian memorials at Neuve Chapelle in France and at Port Tewfik on the Suez Canal; and the Menin Gate at Ypres. The last bears the names of some 6o,000 officers and men " . . who fell in Ypres salient, but to whom the fortune of war denied the known and honoured burial given to their comrades in death." The list of the great memorials will be completed when those at Thiepval, Vimy (for the Cana dians), Villiers-Bretonneux (for the Australians in France), and Basra are added ; but a number of smaller memorials commemo rate those "missing" near where they fell.
Cemetery and memorial registers are published by the corn mission ; these when finished will provide a complete record of the Empire's dead.
The unprecedented nature of the task with which the commis sion was charged is obvious ; its complexity and magnitude will be realized when it is remembered that the 725,000 known graves for which they are responsible are scattered all over the world in many different countries with different laws and customs, some of them the enemy countries with whom special provisions were made in the treaties of peace to ensure the graves being respected; and there are no less than 15,000 burial places in different parts of Europe and the East where British sailors and soldiers rest, the great majority being in civil cemeteries containing small groups of graves, but some 1,50o of them being cemeteries of consider able size, the largest containing 12,000 graves.
Permanent Maintenance.—As a guarantee that the graves and memorials shall be forever cared for, the various governments of the empire represented on the commission have undertaken to provide permanently the income required for maintenance at the accepted standard of upkeep laid down by the commission. After discussion it was agreed that an endowment fund amounting to .15,000,000 should be established for this purpose by the United Kingdom and Dominion Governments and this fact was announced to the House of Commons on July 30, 1925, by Sir Laming Worthington-Evans, at that time chairman of the commission. Gen. Sir Herbert Lawrence, E. R. Peacock and Maj-Gen. Sir Fabian Ware were appointed the first trustees of the endowment fund.
French and American Graves.—France, on whose soil lay over 3,000,00o allied and enemy dead, was faced with the prob lem of honouring her fallen soldiers without clogging the wheels of industry and agriculture, which were beginning to revive under peace conditions, even in the devastated areas where the graves lay thickest. The British helped to solve the difficulty by concentrating all isolated graves into cemeteries which would forever mark the British battle-line. The French adopted the further expedient of giving the next-of-kin the opportunity of having their dead re-buried at the State's expense in the church yard or burial-ground of their native place, while those who were left would rest in great national cemeteries constructed by the State as a lasting monument to the heroism of the soldiers who died for France.
About 50,000 fallen soldiers of the American Expeditionary Forces were borne back across the Atlantic to rest in their own land. The American authorities would no doubt have hesitated to undertake a task of such difficulty had not a pledge been given before a single American battalion left the United States that no American soldier who died fighting for his country and the liber ties of nations should be left to lie on foreign soil except at the express wish of his next-of-kin. There are 30,703 American dead buried in eight American cemeteries in Europe. Six of the ceme teries containing 29,900 graves are situated in France; one, with 366 graves, is situated in Belgium, and one, with 437 graves, is situated in England. The cemeteries are planned on the principle of uniform treatment of the graves, a conception which appears to have been first put into practice by those who laid out Arlington national cemetery, a burial place of many of those who fell in the American Civil and other wars of the United States.
(F. W.)