17 AUGUST 1901, Page 13

A COLONIAL MEMORIAL.

(To Via EDITOR OF VIE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,--May I be allowed to correct two errors into which your correspondent, Mr. Myers, seems to have fallen in the matter of the Archbishop of Cape Town's proposal regarding a new cathedral Church to be erected as a memorial of our soldiers who have fallen in the war? It is difficult to think of such a monument as a new cathedral without regarding it, in one sense, as a "national" monument; but it ' is perhaps just now a misleading epithet to apply to it, as it seems to give to some minds an impression that some "national," i.e., public, funds are to be given to the building. No contributions of that sort, be sure, will be asked, or would be granted. Also Mr. Myers, I hope and believe, misrepre- sents the scheme in writing of it as "a proposition that a half-built church at Cape Town should be completed with this commemorative intent." The present building can only be regarded by those who know it as temporary under any circumstances, and a memorial cathedral worthy of the object and the occasion would have to be built new from the ground. If the cathedral is built, it will, no doubt, be looked upon in course of time as a " national r monument, the Westminster Abbey of the Colony; but the erection of it is proposed to be the work only of persons, some of whom perhaps may wish to make a thank-offering for the return of their friends from the war, but chiefly of those who are tuasious-- " Q.lis desiderio sit pudor ant modus Tam can capitis "- that the land where their loved ones lie should bear a worthy and enduring witness to the faith in which they died, and the "sure and certain hope" which consecrates for us their distant and unknown graves.—I am, Sir, &c.,