IX

EMPTY BASES OF OLD STATUES

PASSING through the five new republics and Bessarabia, I was greatly struck with the absence of statues. They are countries with no famous men," I thought. But in that I was mistaken. These are new States-the peoples have their heroes, but the sculptors must not be hurried. They have not had time to immortalise them in stone. There used to be statues in plenty in these countries: statues of Russians, of emperors, statesmen, generals. But they have all been laid low. They have been pulled down and carted away, leaving in every park and square of every town unsightly blocks of stone and strange, empty pedestals.

A German writer once said that it was folly to cast salt into the sea-or statues into the mud. The Germans paid little attention to that writer. They are more prone to statue-raising than most

other nations. Berlin is made painful by bad

statues.

Still, if France had taken Berlin in the War, one cannot imagine her wreaking her hate upon the monuments there. With some witty asides, the French would have let them stand. But the young are short of humour, and so it is with the new nations of Europe. They must emphasise their own nationhood by pulling down the foreign statues in their midst.

It was strange in Riga to see, in the midst of the city, in one of the most prominent sites, a great blank block of granite, looking like a "stone of sacrifice". It is not inartistic, a place of prayer for the Letts, an altar in the midst of their capital. There are flower-plots about it. The stranger of the first day makes a mistake and lifts his hat as he comes up to it, thinking it a Cenotaph, or the grave of the unknown Lettish soldier. But no, the block has no present significance. It is merely the base on which once stood an emperor in stone. In the base itself was no offence, and therefore the Letts left it standing there, hoping, no doubt, in time to come, to raise upon it some Lettish hero, their first President, or the General who shall deliver them when at last the Russians fall upon them to re-annex their land to the power of Moscow.

In some States, it is true, new statues have begun to appear upon the old pedestals, and I imagine that within a decade these vacant lots upon the field of Fame will all be filled. There is a grave technical difficulty in this, however. Formerly, blocks were made to fit. They were in keeping with the statues above them. Now, the statues must be made in due proportion and design to harmonise with the stone blocks. Already I can see this does not trouble the ministers of Art of the less cultured States, but there is no doubt that posterity will laugh at some of the stone effigies which strive to occupy the vacant air once filled by the great Peter and the no less famous Alexander.

The Baltic Sea, made famous by Peter the Great, honoured the Russian Tsar in all her ports; but now there is a new Baltic, determined to forget Peter. The statues and monuments are all down, the streets named after Russian heroes are re-named in local languages, even the ports themselves have been re-named. For who recognises the great towns of Tallin, Ventspils, Liepaja, Klaipeda under these names? Commemorative tablets of Russian victories are erased from church walls, Government offices, and libraries. All that was on high is cast upon the ground; all

that was low hopes to grow to the high place of honour rendered vacant by revolution.

This new phenomenon in the Baltic is duplicated in Poland and Bessarabia, bearing witness to the abased prestige of Russia. How low she stands to-day-everywhere! In Kishinef, the capital of Bessarabia, in the pride of place stands a magnificent slab of stone ill-smirched with pitch or tar. I read the half-defaced inscription. On one side it was-From Grateful Bessarabia; on the other were the words-To Alexander the Blest. There was a quaint effect in the defacing of the words " grateful Bessarabia ", as if suddenly Bessarabia had become ungrateful. I believe the Government intended to chisel off the words Alexander the Blest and put the name of Woodrow Wilson instead. But seeing that America failed to ratify the Peace Treaty they paused in doubt. I think now it has been decided to place the King and Queen of Roumania upon this slab.

A worse fate overtook the Empress Catherine at Akkerman. She was broken up and distributed to the winds and odours of an ash-and-can dump outside the town. On the pedestal in the public garden some one has planted a cactus or prickly pear, and it thrives exceedingly. The words "Something evil was once here were chalked

on the pedestal by a propagandist, rubbed out by the local population, and then scrawled on again.

In Riga and Dvinsk (now Daugavpils) and in all the border cities there are plentiful empty bases of statues, sometimes looking like toadstools, sometimes like the stumps of great trees of stone sawn down and taken away; the children climb up and down upon them, playing "I'm the King of the Castle", or striking attitudes. The clever ones who remember the old stone figures cut many funny capers on the pedestals of the displaced heroes. They add thereby to the life and merriment in the parks and the gardens.

Grown-up people, however, look very solemn and serious when asked about these statues. Each has a reasoned defence or an impassioned protest to pour into your ear. They take the matter so seriously that one wonders whether, if the Communists ever got power in England, they would banish Charles the First from Charing Cross, pull Cœur de Lion from his horse beside the House of Lords, heave Nelson from his column, put Gladstone away from the Strand and Disraeli from Parliament Square, leaving behind granite blocks and pedestals where the partisans of the old heroes might go to weep and partisans of the new might mock.