HOW ARE WE USING LIBERTY BOUGHT BY BLOOD?

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 79, 27 April 1949, Page 5

HOW ARE WE USING LIBERTY BOUGHT BY BLOOD?

“Inspired by their deeds and sacrifices to be better men and women, let us dedicate ourselves with a new sincerity to the better use of that which has cost men their blood and lives.” That thought-provoking, challenging sentence brought out clearly and strongly the theme of Rev R. T. Dodds’s address at the Whakatane Anzac Day service on Monday, when he urged his audience not to pay mere empty lip service to the sacrifices of the fallen and the maimed, but to show by the quality of their own lives that they valued the liberty that had been preserved for them.

That liberty, preserved through sacrifice, should now have a deeper value. He urged his hearers to pray that we may be delivered from taking too lightly that for which men had paid with their -lives, and to consider to what purpose we were using our liberty so , dearly bought. To commemorate the fallen were but an empty mockery if those who remained were to allow themselves to slip back into living easy, selfcentred lives. There was still ample scope for the team spirit that won the war.

Presided over by the Mayor, Mr B. # S. Barry, the service* was conducted by members of the Ministers’ Association, Rev J. C. J. Wilson leading the opening prayer, and Rev W. Rangi taking as the scripture reading Paul’s beautifully compact and compelling essay on love ■(charity) in Ist Corinthians. Both the Pipe Band and the Boys’ Band took part in the ceremony, the pipers playing the impressive parade of Returned and Home Service personnel, Guides, Scouts and Boys’ Brigade and kindred organisations to the theatre for the service and to the Rock afterwards, and the Boys’ Band playing the hymns and appropriate music during the laying of the wreaths at the Rock.

Members of the Legion of Frontiersmen provided the guard at the Rock during the laying of wreaths by organisations on parade and local body representatives, ' and while servicemen filed past to plant their poppies in the cross outlined on the lawn.