The Cordova daily times., 1920-03-09

-lHERE is movement in Kan
 sas City for the erection of a
 memorial to the American
 soldiers who took part in the world war, in the form of some monll- mental work of sculptural art. Its ad- vocates, says the Kansas City Star, will find historic precedent worthy of study and pregnant with sugges- ton in the famous Trajans column at Rome, which remains today after eight cen centuries one of the worlds me- 1norial wonders. In its original setting it was but a part of a magnificent sys- tenn of public buildings-two libraries, the Basilica Ulpia and the temple of TraJan-Which composed the forum erected by the Roman emperor Trajan to commemorate his reign and to en- plazOn his victories for pOsterity. The designer Hf the great forum of Trajan was Appolodorus, the Creek architect.
 The name of the artist under whose inspired hand the column grew from base to capital and who recorded in it's stones the martial deeds of his im- perial master has been forgotten That he was Roman, however, is attested by the fact that the column itself is distinctively Roman in it's design and in its inspiration. Today, of all. the splendid buildings and monuments that composed the forum of Trajan but one remains intact, the great column which tells the story of Trajan's achieve ments.
 It was after his return from the Da- clan wars that Trajan, in 113 A. D., caused to be erected in the midst of the forum he had built this column, which was designed not only to per petuate the memory of his Dacian vic tories, but also to afford repository for his ashes, which were placed in a golden urn in a chamber under the column. Surviving eighteen centuries of wars and the corroding touch of time and of "brois that root out the work of masonry" the column of Trajan is today one of the most beau tiful of Roman works of art and a document in stone of priceless value to the historian.
 Is of Grecian Marble.
 The ancient name Of this famous column was the Columna Colchis, so called from it's winding stairs like the spiral of a shell, by which ascent was made from pedestal to top. It is built of huge blocks of Greek marble The shaft, base and capital, not counting the pedestal, which measured eighteen feet in height, are exactly 100 Roman feet high (ninety-seven and a half modern English). In diameter the shaft measures twelve feet at the bot tom, tapering gently to about ten feet under the capital. On the top of the capital, in it's original form, stood a colossal gilt bronze statue of the en- peror, nearly twenty feet high, hold ing an orb in one hand and a spear } in the other. This statue was stolen and carried away during one of the. inroads of the Byzantine emperors in the fifth century, and was replaced in tie sixteenth century by the statue of St. Peter, which now surmounts the column.
 The tall pedestal on which the col umn is built is richly decorated with reliefs of armor and trophies taken from the Dacians. On one side is a tablet carried by two figures of Vic tory and upon it is the dedicatory in- scription. At each angle above the cornice of the pedestal is an eagle SUD- porting a garland of flowers. Imme- diately beneath the tablet is the door, way to the spiral staircase, lighted by forty-two small openings. The wind ing stairs consist of 1S4 steps around a central newel, all of solid marble.
 As beautiful a work of sculptured beauty as is the pedestal itself, the part of the column which most moves the modern beholder to wonder and astonishment is the shaft, which, standing on the tomb of the emperor, rises with it's mass of relief wrought figures a hundred feet in the air. It is formed of twenty-three drums of marble, arranged in spiral bands of Areliefs, which climb the column to the feet of the statue of the emperor which formerly stood upon it's capital. Wrought into these stones are more than 25O0 figures, besides a great num- Der of ba ckground accessories worked out with great minuteness of detail, the figures varying in height from three feet at the bottom to nearly four feet at the top. The sculptures repre- sent the complete history of Trajan's two Dacian campaigns, upon which his military renown rests, and the story is told in stone as a historian might tell it by the written word