1746 and All That
When I was a child our Scottish housekeeper used to lessen the impact of all disasters, mishaps or disappointments by reminding us that 'Worse happened at Culloden,' and I grew up in the belief that this battlefield must be the grimmest place on earth. Next week, on October H, it will be the scene of an unusual and imaginative ceremony. Mr. Cremin, the Irish Ambassador at London, will unveil an in- scribed memorial to the Irish troops who fought, suffering heavy casualties, in the French ser- vice; the French military attaché will be present. Credit for the idea belongs to Miss Katherine Tomasson, author of Battles of the '45. She sug- gested it to Sir Charles Petrie, he passed it on to the Military History Society of Ireland, Inver- ness County Council gave it their blessing and a number of other bodies helped the project on its way. I am all for this sort of thing and would like, while we are on the subject, to suggest that steps should be taken to preserve as historic monuments a strictly limited number of the anti-invasion pill-boxes which one still encounters at supposedly strategic points all over the countryside. These relics of 1940 are far from beautiful, but they have at least as much historical significance as British forts and Druidic menhirs. Posterity will have cause to reproach us if we let them all fade into limbo.
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