Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1919-11-16
BY f.. M. GOODMAN.

TIME officer in charge at Ypres
has put this placard among the
ruins Of the glorious Cloth
Hall. shattered by German
shell:
NOTICE.
This is Holy Ground
No Stone of this Fabric may be
taken away.
1t Is Heritage for all Civilized
Peoples.
Within sight OF this notice people
hunt for souvenirs and then sit in the
sun and drink beer. An English cor
respondent who has seen that sad ex-
hibition of human callousness calls
them "Ghouls of the Battlefield"
Who are they? Belgians. who have
perhaps supped so full of horrors in
the last five years that it comes nat
ural to them to live in graveyard.
French" SO says Lieut.. Gen. Bethune,
"a few English, many Americans.
And British soldiers were selling bo-
gus souvenirs"
At Zonnebeke. zillebeke, Hooge and
Houthulst, there is no merry making
and souvenir-buying. Those are the
hunting grounds for the souvenir
hunter with crowbar. The French
and Belgians take no hand in this
game-the vandals are. say the Brit
ish newspapers. English and Ameri-
cans. Here is no town majors notice
and no vigilant Waterman, and the
ruined gun pits and gun fittings are
vanishing. stone by stone and bit by
bit The Chinese salvage men stand
by and see white men of Anglo Saxon
race pilfer on, what is veritable
field of martyrs.
In Europe it may be true to say
that one can hardly find foot of
ground that is not some ones grave.
Belgium has been the battlefield of
Europe since the coming of the Ro-
mans and perhaps before. Countless
generations of enemies and allies of
the native jewellers have~ left their
bones between the North sea and the
Rhine vineyards, and no one heeds
them. The dead past has buried it's
dead. But that we should forget
those whose graves are not yet green
is to write ourselves down less than
human.
The Belgians are coming back from
exile; 1t is natural that they should
look upon the matter with different
eyes from ours. Americans are &C
customed to wide spaces and to feel
ing at home in whole continent.
They would quite naturally set aside
battlefields as sacred places, to be
kept unused but to the Belgian most
Of these blood-stained fields are pri-
marily sacred because they are his
home, and the way to keep homes sa-
cred is to live in them. Anglo Saxons
cannot demand that Belgians should
make their homeland into a vast mu-
scum because other people have died
there Belgium Is small country,
very crowded, and2its sons do not wish
to emigrate. They must live in their
country, whoever is buried under it.
What they can do they do. in tending
the cemeteries where Americans and
British lie.
But Ypres is an exception. Before
the war 1t was. being very old and
most a memorial of the past. 1t is
said that its late inhabitants are will
ing to build their new homes upon an
other site and to leave the Cloth Hall
ruins and the unidentified graves as a
memorial of the great war and those
who fell in it. One suggestion is that
King Albert should be asked to drive
all this money changers out of this
temple; another that this ground
should be given over to Britain as a
symbol of its sacrifice. as the British
graveyards in France are to be Brit
ish ground forever.
Others think that Britain should buy
Ypres: but that is a plan which well
might wound Belgian pride. Can al
lies who have fought for the freedom
of Belgian soil without offense offer
money for it? Before ever we came
there it was Belgian monument.
The minister of the interior has told
the Belgian parliament that his gov
eminent has come to an agreement
with the British government to pre-
serve Ypres, as it is, as a "place of
pilgrimage" But it depends in the
main on the pilgrims whether any
such place Is sacred or desecrated.
Governments cannot control this: nor
can bereaved parents who remain at
home. And Ypres is not the onlv
battlefield.
But Britain can appeal TO King
Albert to save Ynrae fror, .,o..