AN ACT OF KINSHIP

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 32, 1 November 1918, Page 4

AN ACT OF KINSHIP

New Zealand soldiers and the people of the Dominion generally will keenly appreciate a graceful act of kinship performed not long ago by the villagers of Bore Ferrers,' in Devonshire. It is fresh in memory that a little over a year ago ten New Zealand soldiers, members of the Twenty-Eighth Reinforcements, were killed in a railway accident at Berc Ferrers station 'while they were on their way to Salisbury Plain. In memory of the men who were prevented in this tragic fashion from playing their part in the war, the people of Bere Ferrers have erected a , mural tablet in their parish church. The memorial was unveiled by the Bishop of Exeter on September 12. Some particulars of the occasion and the inscription carried by the tablet will be found in another column. To New Zealanders this simple ceremony in a little Devon village will appeal not only as claiming their gratitude, but as an admirable'proof of the enduring tics of affection that unite the Mother Country and its most distant Dominion. The' meaning it holds was admirably stated by a writer in the Wqstern Uorniny News, of Plymouth: "The message of yesterday's ceremony to our fellow-Britons in New Zealand is that they and wc arc brothers, and that in 'honouring the memory, of their gallant dead wo are sanctifying that great tie of the blood of the free Anglo-Saxon race upon which depends the future liberty and civilisation of the world." The tribute paid at Bere Ferrers to pur dead soldiers cannot be made known too widely throughout the Dominion, for wherever' it is known it will stir a quick and grateful response.