ANZAC MEMORIAL

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 126, 24 November 1932, Page 13

ANZAC MEMORIAL

UNVEILED AT PORT SAID

CRUSADERS FROM AFAR

W. 5L HUGHES'S TEIBUTE

Onlted Press Association—By Electric Tele-

graph—Copyright. PORT SAID*, 23rd November.

The Northampton Regiment, which is allied with the 43rd and 48th Australian Battalions, and also the- 15th Battalion of the North Auckland Regiment, provided the guard of honour for Mr. W. M s Hughes when he unveiled at Port Said to-day the memorial to the Light Horse and other Sinai combatants. King Fuad was represented by his Grand Chamberlain. The principal officers of the British Army and Air Force, the Egyptian Prime Minister, Sidky Pasha, and other representatives of the Egyptian and Palestine Governments were present.

After reviewing the cliequered history of the monument, neither of whose sculptors lived .to see it completed, Mr. Hughes paid an eloquent tribute to those it commemorated.

"To all who pass along the Suez Canal." he said, "this monument must make an irresistible appeal, for it tells a story not less enthralling, romantic, and wonderful than the Odyssey itself.

"The most sluggish imagination must be fired by a recital of the journeyings of young warriors from their far-off homes to this ancient land. Bred in remote countries in an environment of perfect- peace, those who had never heard a shot fired in anger came to fight in-the greatest war in history and proved themselves born fighters, facing the rigours of a stem campaign in Palestine and Syria. ': ■ >

"Their* buoyancy of spirits rose triumphant. Their belief in ultimate victory never weakened. Theirs indeed is a deathless story."

Mr. Hughes also paid a tribute to the Australian Flying Corps, which the monument also commemorates, saying that Lord Allenby's masterly strategy culminating in the battle of Armageddon owed much to tho Australian airmen destroying enemy machines and making reconnaissance impossible. "The men we commemorate to-day," ho v said, "made and changed history. Though their bones are bleached by uesert suns, and their bodies are covered .by foreign soil, their spirits live and their memories will remain fragrant through the ages." Major J. N; Stubbs, formerly of Auckland, now Director of the Lands Department in. Palestine, represented New Zealand at the ceremony and placed a wreath on the monument.

The Port Said Memorial was designed by Sir Aston Webb and Mr. Alfred Gilbert and completed by the late Sir Bertram Mackennal. The memorial consists of a group of .bronze statuary 14ft high. A mounted Australian Light Horseman and a dismounted New Zealander are shown in the charge.