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Britain, as a former world

11     Britain, as a former world power and until forty years ago the ruler of a vast
2 colonial empire, is likely often to be faced with claims for the return of items of cultural
3 property from its erstwhile colonies and protectorates.
24     Of intrinsic importance and much public interest is the Greek claim for the return
5 to Athens of the Parthenon marbles. Most of the problems arising in connection with
6 cultural property, and the arguments on which they turn, can be illustrated from the
7 discussion which this claim has provoked.
38     There are two arguments which merit serious consideration, and which, mutatis
9 mutandis, are applicable in a number of other cases. The first is the argument of the
10 integrity of a work of art. The Parthenon, of which its sculptures are an integral part and
11 not mere external decoration, is clearly a work of art of unique quality and importance. Is
12 it reasonable that one should have to travel 1,500 miles to see the whole of it?
413     The second argument is that of symbolic significance, and once again, it is one of
14 very general application. The Statue of Liberty is a symbol of the United States both in
15 the sense that a picture of it at once calls to mind that country, and in the more profound
16 sense that most Americans see it as a kind of token or representation of important
17 features of American history and the world role of the United States. For many Greeks
18 the Parthenon and its sculptures are just such a symbol of their national identity and of
19 their heritage from the past, and the retention of the sculptures in the British Museum is
20 seen as a diminution of their dignity as a people, all the more humiliating now that other
21 peoples and states are recovering their national symbols.
522     A serious cause of hesitation to return cultural property is the fear that if anything
23 is returned this will open the floodgates and empty the great international museums. The
24 Times on October 30, 1985, commenting on the Greek request for the return of the
25 Parthenon marbles, declared that 'The consideration which dominates the debate today
26 is not history, or the issues of competence and accessibility - where there is hardly
27 anything to choose between London and Athens. The problem is precedent.'
628     In the first place this point of view is based on a logical fallacy. If it would be bad
29 for everything to be returned to its place of origin, it does not follow that nothing must
30 ever be returned. Secondly, it is a morally questionable attitude. If one recognizes that it
31 is right to do something, one does not refrain from doing it because later on someone else
32 may as a result do something wrong.
733     In any case, precedent is of prime importance only where there is a tribunal which
34 is bound by it, and there is probably none which can give binding decisions on claims for
35 the return of cultural property. This is a matter for negotiation rather than judicial
36 decision, and in any event scarcely any two cases are sufficiently similar to create a valid
37 precedent.
838     These problems will be with us for a long time. They are bound to generate
39 powerful emotions. But the way to settle them is by careful and dispassionate
40 consideration of historical, aesthetic, moral and technical arguments, and by recognition
41 that the present distribution of the cultural heritage of the world is the product of past
42 history and will be changed by future history.
 
     Rob ert Browning in The Times Literary Supplement, July 25, 1986