I fully agree with you Mike - and the sad thing is that the Imperial War Graves Commission was so far ahead of its time when it announced in January 1918 -"the Commission's decision is that those who have given their lives are members of one family, and children of one mother who owes to all an equal tribute of gratitude and affection, and that in death, all, from General to Private of whatever race or creed, should receive equal honour under a memorial which should be the common symbol of their comradeship and of the cause for which they died" - There was criticism of this stance from a lot of quarters , based on class ( officers should have a bigger headstone! ) religion ( the headstone was not Christian enough ) etc etc - most of this criticism was very publicly aired in the newspapers of the time especially The Spectator and the Daily Mail. Even Rudyard Kipling (one of the commissioners of the IWGC ) was denounced as being not an appropriate choice for devising the inscription on the standard memorials as he was "not a known religious man" - the phrase Kipling had come up with for unidentified remains was - " A soldier of the Great War ..Known unto God"
So its sad that a generation that doesn't read beyond the Headlines will now believe that the CWGC is "institutionally racist" - when nothing could be further from the truth.
|