“LA DELIVRANCE.”

Hokitika Guardian, 16 December 1927, Page 4

“LA DELIVRANCE.”

UNVEILING A .MEMORIAL. LONDON, Oct. 27. Thousands of people gazed with admiration on “La Delivranoe’’—“this quivering figure of beauty,” as Mr Lloyd George described it—when at noon yesterday the Union Jack fluttered to the base of the pedestal and M. Emile Guillaume’s exquisite statin 1 stood 1 created to the public at the Finchley cross-roads—the meetingplace of the Finchley road and the North Circular road. It is the gift, of Lord Rotherniere to Finchley. Mr Lloyd ’George reversed the usual order of things by unveiling the statue before addressing the company. “I thought it better to give you all opportunity of seeing for yourselves this magnificent specimen of French art and of drinking in the full meaning of its message,” he said. He continued : "1 am proud to see that we have with us to-day the great artist who conceived and fashioned this masterpiece, one of the finest sculptures of modern times. 1 do not believe that the l genius of this great artist ever n.so to greater heights of imagination ancl accomplishment than in this figure which you are now feasting, your eves noon.”

PATRIOTIC IMPULSE. The gift is a tribute not merely to (lie generosity of the donor, hut to his artistic taste, and it is a patriotic impulse whio’.i moved him to purchase it and to enrich and adorn the metropolis of the Empire with such a masterpiece of art. (Cheers). London has a great many monuments and memorials and sculptures, and they are of a varied and, I may sad, variegated kind. (I angliter). Tf you will look in our squares and thoroughfares you will see that some of these sculptures attain a conspicuous degree of merit; a few r.f them are of high distinction : the greatest of them all are relegated to niches m our museums; hut there l are not a few, 1 am sorry to say, pure atrocities —(laughter and splicers)—planted in places where they can he seen and where tlio wayfarer, in seeing, can shudder. (Laughter). There is only one excuse for exhibiting them in flic open, and that is that, they are exposed to the attrition of our climate, so that gradually they will lie l corroded and crumble away. However, that- is a long process, and it is tins only sense in which they will over attain immortality. 1 am therefore glad on behalf of London—this 1 great centre of the greatest Empire in the world—that it should he adorned by this figure of quivering; beauty. There is far too great a worship of pure ugliness in these .days—ugliness in pictures, ugliness in music, ugliness in sculpture, ugliness in literature—and it is something to rejoice in that you have a thing of bounty like this to gladden the heart- of the myriads who. will he passing to and fro along this thoroughfare.

Lord Rotherniere lias deprecated the idea that in giving this figure he intended to add to the many war memorials w-e have. All -the >»imr. if you nil! just- gaze at it. if you will think of its meaning, you will see that its message represents a symbol of what victory in the Great War meant to humanity—-a deliverance 1 . (Cheers). We are .too apt to forget, that as-

pect—the devastation of war. tin l ruin of war. the wreckag eof war. The reaction that followed the war. the depression and the burdens of war, are obscuring the splendour of the achievement of the British Empire in what it accomplished in the war in the emancipation of mankind. This is a- figure fashioned by a great French artist. That is wily it is such a living and a palpitating figure. The French know tho real meaning of the deliverance. France knew wlmt the invasion meant. Theinvasion of its soil, th-o desolation, , the devastation, the ruin, the do- I strurtion of villages and towns; the ' hundreds of thousands driven away '■ Front their homes and coming hack to I find even the foundations effaced from 1 tlvo surface of the earth; the very j soil of its richest provinces churned ; by the fury and frenzy of war. |

That is why. when a French artist represents the victory, there is the tonso passion of deliverance in if. (Cheers). Great artists wo may have, but. with due respect to them, it is only a Frenchman who could put that soul into the emancipation which you have got in this great and palpitating figure. ESCAPE FROM VASSALAGE.

4 doubt very much whether to-day wo realise the extent of our escape. (“Hear, hear.”) The greatest escape of all was an escape we shared with France. We have not the visible aids fo memory which they have in the destruction of their provinces. The greatest escape of all was that we escaped from the vassalage and the enslavement of Europe by a great military despotism. (Cheers). Wo forget it—all the wrong, all the cost, all the suffering, all the taxation is obscuring it.

We are too apt to forget the achievement in our sorrow and what we are enduring, but T would ask you to exercise your imagination for one moment to conceive what would have happened in Europe if that military despotism had triumphed. And il came nearer than any of your realise 1 can tell you that-—much nearer. There were seven Allied countries in the war. Before the third year of the war four of them wore crushed, trampled under foot—scattered—their

armies completely shattered. Rumania. Belgium, (Serbia, and the greatest of them all. Russia, completely ernshed before the third vear of (he

war. , Tf German statesmanship bad been equal to German soldiering I don't know what would have happened. There would have been no America in. Britain and France alone would have bad to face the most formidable military machine the world has ever seen. WORLD'S GREATEST ARMY. Marshal Focli told me during the war that the German Army invading France was the greatest army the world ever saw—in its equipment, numbers, training, discipline, and organisation. It was driven by men who placed obedience, discipline, authority, subjection to the word of tile War Lord above every civic virtue. To them liberty was. something purely inimical to efficiency. . That is what we escaped front—a Europe of vassal States subject to one resistless military tyranny. That, is what this (pointing to the statue) means. It was an escape from that. Europe has many a time been saved by the valour of its sons from something similar which would have meant destruction to its civilisation and to its ordered progress. Before the gates of Vienna, on the field of Marathon centuries ago; yes. and when the English Fleet scattered the Armada ; but never has it faced a greater danger than in 1014. Front that wo have been delivered The' next great task of humanity is not deliverance by the sword, but deliverance from the sword. (Loud cheers). j The Hon. Edward Cadognn. M.P. j in moving a vote of thanks to MS; | Lloyd George, said it was a signal j

.honour that thoy should have with them one who contributed more than any other living statesman to that deliverance of which the beautiful masterpiece was the emblem. Mr Lived George’s work in the war had placed him in an unassailable position, not only in the estimate of his contemporaries but also of generations yet unborn. Mr 'l'. It. Robertson, a former ALP. for the division, seconded the vote of thanks, which was carried with three rousings cheers for Mr Lloyd George. The Rc-v. S. F. L. Rernays then offered a prayer of dedication of “this glorious emblem of our deliverance.’’ and the proceedings ended with the National Anthem.

OTAIHAPE FREEZING CO. , TATHAPE, Dec, 14. At a meeting to-day of the shareholders of the Otaihape Freezing Co., a resolution was carried that the company go into liquidation, and Mr .1. ]>. Price was appointed liquidator, with two directors, who are also guarantors, as an advisory committee. Tile freezing works have ceased o;MM’ations lor some time and stock has boon consigned to Feifding under an agreement which expired last July. The company has been losing money for some time. Last year’s losses amounted to £2CCO. The decision arrived at by the meeting means the passing of another farmers’ co-operative concern.