| Summary: | As early as 1914, the French Ministry of Public Education and Fine Arts took the first steps to protect the monuments located in the combat zones. The idea gradually took form of protecting and promoting the cultural heritage which had been devastated by the war. In 1917 the War Memory and Relics Commission (Commission des vestiges et souvenirs de guerre) was set up, entrusted with the task of reflecting on how to give conserve these relics by means of statutory protection.. However 1917 also marked the beginning of a change of attitudes towards such projects. By 1921, only about thirty projects for listing wartime monuments remained. The earlier desire to save for coming generations a selection of mutilated monuments bearing witness to the scars of the war and to 'German barbarism' gave way to more pragmatic, human and financial preoccupations.
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