The Cordova daily times., 1920-04-30


 H VIl Waterloo 1 knows the h Lion I Mound, but not one in a thou sand is acquainted with It's true history, and the great majority of Brit ish tourists at least regard 1t as the British Lion. In 1929, shortly after it's erection, a French visitor named Saintine described it as "the BelgiC Lion looking towards and apparently threatening France" That description seems not to have been forgotten, and probably lies at the root of the sug- gestion just made In Brussels to turn the lion round so that the threat-it needs very lively imagination to see any at all-in the pose may be divert ed from France in the direction of Holland, writes Demetrius c. Boulger in the Graphic
 What was the origin of the mound and the lion? In the first place, the animal represented is neither q Brit ish nor a Belgic emblem; it is the Dutch lion, and somewhere in a corner, if it has not been Obliterated, will be found, imagine, the motto of Nassau Orange, "Je Maintiendrai." Whatever is done with it, then, the susceptibil- ities of neither Belgians nor British are involved. The British government have certainly no inherited claim to a voice in whatever solution may be adopted. It is not their concern.
 How the Mound Was Built.
 In 1926 William I of the Netherlands, the great-grandfathe of the present Queen Wilhelmina and one of the most obstinate personages to be found in the whole range of history, conceived that the field of Waterloo required a memorial to establish the heroism of his eldest son, who had received a wound on the occasion. The king was actuated entirely by dynastic consid. eratiOns, unless he also wished to pro- vide the fOundrles of Cockerill, iii which he was the largest shareholder, with a profitable commission. At all events 1t is quite clear that the Bel gfan people took nointefest or part in the matter, which was decided by a vote of the statesgeneral at Tie Hague. The vote being passed, the governments of Britain and Prussia were then invited to make contribu- tiOn to the memorial. They complied to a certain limited extent, the British consenting, for their part, to the re- moval of certain French cannon in Wellington's Belgian fortresses in or der to provide the material for the proposed lion.
 By that time William had decided on the form of the memorial. It was to be the erection of an enormous mound some 200 feet above the crest of Mont St. Jean, at the spot where his son, the prince of Orange, had been wound ed the mound to be crowned by the Lion of the Netherlands. The clay for the mound was brought from the steep sides of the famous "sunken road" which disappeared in the process, by women of the district who were paid at the rate of half a franc basket, and the site marked by Wellington's tree was included within the radius of the elevation-so that when the duke re- visited the scene in 1929 with his .daughter-in-law, Lady Douro, he made the expressive comment, My battle field has been spoilt."
 Legend of the Lions Tall.
 The memorial, completed In 1928, had been in existence two years when the Belgian revolution broke out in August, 1880 A year later a French army advanced to Louvain to repel a Dutch invasion. It was said that some of the French corps in that advance crossed the field and took offense, not at the mound or the lion, but at the shape of its tail, which, erect in the air, seemed to express defiance! The story went on to say that in their wrath they broke off the tail, and that the complaisant Belgians supplied the lion with new one, no longer erect but made gracefully dependent,
 l went to considerable pains in 1901 to show that this legend could have no real basis, because the contemporary drawings in the Brussels Museum of Prints showed the lion being hoisted into it's position with the tail in pre- cisely the same form as it wears to- day There is no evidence of any change having been made at that time or any other.
 In December, 1882, the French army rendered a second signal service to the Belgian people by the siege and cap ture of the Antwerp citadel, and once more French regiment traversed the scene without doing any damage. A proposal was then made in the Belgian chamber by a patriotic leader, M. Gen debien, to the effect that the na- tfonal gratitude should be evinced by the removal of the lion monument al together. He called 1t, and justly, as has been shown, "the hateful emblem of the despotism and violence which made us subject for 16 years to the humiliating yoke which we cast off in