VICTORY MEMORIAL SCHOOL.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17472, 5 June 1922, Page 2

VICTORY MEMORIAL SCHOOL.

TO BE OPENED ON SATURDAY. The Rev. Canon "Wilford, at the end of his sermon in the Cathedral last night, referred to the completion of the Victory Memorial School. He said that the Church might well be proud of the fact that it had fallen to her lot to build the first big war memorial in • Christchurch. While others were making up their minds whether they should support a Column in the Square or a Bridge of Memories at the head of Cashel street, fi mere handful of people had determined that something must be done without deiay. The i'orjn of the memorial had their careful consideration. There were days when people were rightly emphasising that no memorial ought to take u utilitarian form. On thp oilier hand, there was a widely expressed opinion that the erection of many columns or pillars throughout the Dominion would in many cases on'.y disfigure the country-side. So the promoters sought a mean between the two extremes. The memorial that they would build must be something from which they themselves could derive no benefit whatsoever; but if succeeding generations could be helped—that surely was a different thing. So they conceived the idea of putting up a Victory j School in which succeeding generations might be daily reminded of the valour of the soldiers of the Dominion in the Great War. Theirs, the preacher said, had not been an easy task. Nothing that was really very easy seemed worth doing. Opposition was met with in quite unexpected quarters, but" the dogged, perseverance which had always characterised the British nation gained again the success that it ultimately always must. There stood finished to-day °ne of the best primary schools in the whole of the Dominion. Its foundation ston-e told of the glory of our fallen heroes, its assembly hall contained a memorial calendar of exquisite design upon which the children would' look day by day, and which, as the anniversaries came round, would remind them of the battles which took from us our sons. Its spacious playing fields were entered through a gateway with large stone piers on cither side which told the passers-by of the victory which was finally ours in 1918, and of the cross—built there in the stone—tht> cross with its message of self-sacrifice which really won the victory for- us. "Well, might the people of Dunediu, the preacher said, feel that Christchurch had given them a lead when in their Cathedral on the previous Sunday night he had told them of this completed work, and of the fact that of the £9OOO the building and grounds had cost, only about £3oo was still required. Canon Wilford ended by urging one and all to be present when the Arch bishop opened the school next Saturday afternoon at 2.30.