EMPIRE DAY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 121, 25 May 1942, Page 3

EMPIRE DAY

WREATHS LAID '

ALBERT PARK CEREMONY

A public celebration of Empire Day took place at the statue of Queen Victoria in Albert Park yesterday. Wreaths were laid by the Mayor, Mr. J. A. C. Allum, on behalf of the citizens of Auckland, by Mr. H. T. Gibson, chairman of the patriotic societies' central committee, and by Mrs. J. B. Macfarlane, president of the Victoria League, who had also placed a tribute at the Maori War Memorial in Symonds Street. A detachment of the Women's National Service Corps under Company Commander Masson, flanked one side of the area in front of the statue, while representatives of boy scout troops in the Waitemata district, under Messrs. S. P. McGuigan and N. Walker, were on another side. Commander D. G. H. Bush, D.S.C., represented the Royal Navy. The Last Post was sounded, after which the Mayor spoke. He stressed the need for struggle and sacrifice to retain the Empire s way of life, and prayed that before next Empire Day we would have achieved victory and that New Zealand's sons would have returned home.

Viscount Bledisloe's Empire Day message was then read by Mr. N. R. W. Thomas.

Mr. H. T. Gibson reminded his listeners that it was to commemorate the debt that the Empire owed Queen Victoria that her birthday, May 24, was celebrated as Empire Day. The speaker said that the conception of Empire had come to be regarded as a trust, to be administered, primarily in the interests of its subjects and secondly in the interests of the civilised.

The Reveille was sounded and the singing of the National Anthem concluded the ceremony.