DENKMALS.

Hokitika Guardian, 4 November 1918, Page 4

DENKMALS.

(By Francis Cribble.) An indignant Belgian—-and Heaven knows that the Belgians have ground? enough for indignation - brought tc my’ notice the other day' a grievanct which had hitherto escaped me. li Those Denkmals ! ” he exclaimed. To think that they should have insulted us by setting up their Denkmals in our towns !” “ Their . . . ?” “Their Denkmals—the monuments commemorating German victories ovei the people whom they were pledgee to protect. They have one at Vise—the scene of their first massacre— one at Liege, and others at Antwerp Bixchoote, and Bouillon, in the Ar demies ; I have not the full list, bui that suffices. “ Anel the insolence of the speeches delivered at the unveiling ceremouies ■ What von Eminich stole, that we mean to stick to,’ those aie the very words —I have a newspaper report ol (hem—spoken by the Prussian general who unveiled the Denkmal at Liege.’ So he spoke ; anel his wonts made one thing clear to me. What is to be done with the Denkmals will be 1101 the least pressing of the Belgiat problems during the period of reconstruction. # # # » ME “Do you want to blow them up ?’ I asked. “It might be difficult to do thaf without blowing up other things as well. Besides, there’s a better way, What I want is to see the things broken up and removed from Belgian soil by' German labour. “ And when I speak of German labour I do not meaii the labour ol German workmen. I mean the laboui of the Kaiser himself, and his sons and the other German princes, and the German generals who ordered the massacres and the deportations— Hindenburg, and Ludendorff, and Bulow, and Falkenhayn and such men ns Bethmann Hollweg and Jagow and Reventlow. “ I want to see these men forced to take off their coats and turn to, with picks and shovels, and cart all this Denkmal rubbish away in wheelbarrows fo the German frontier. That is the treatment which will make them repent of militarism. Promise me that you will write in favour of it.” I promised ; and I really think I would allow the Kaiser a temporary respite from the rope in arder that he might thus work fora while at useful tasks of reparation before paying the final penalty.