PRIME MINISTER

Hokitika Guardian, 28 November 1928, Page 5

PRIME MINISTER

ON MEN WHO DIED

DUTY OF EVERY ENGLISHMAN

LONDON, October 19

“ Every Englishman ought to walk through the Menin Gate and recognise that on that gate are the names of 50,000 men who died in the Ypres Salient, and whose last resting place is not known. That will bring home to all of us what modern Avar means—sometimes difficult for civilians to realise —and will strengthen our hearts and hands in striving for peace in this world.” This was a moving passage in a speech which the Prime Minister made at Dudley, when, in the immediate view of widows and near relatives of men who fell in the Avar, he.opened the gates of a neAV memorial clock toAver, and lighted the Eternal Lamp of Remembrance. Mr BaldAvin said that belfore the task of opening a Avar memorial he ahvays quailed. “ I feel,” ho said, “ that on these occasions it is a very difficult thing for a man who did not take part in the Avar to offer any observations in the face of those who did. Reverence for the men who fought, and for the dead, ties one’s tongue as nothing else does.” The great thing missed in this country Avas the man of 35 to 40, avlio today Avould be in his prime, and able to take on his shoulders the big and responsible jobs of life. Those men lay to the number of 1,000,000 from the Empire in battlefields all o\ r er the world. “We haA-e to carry on without them,” said Mr Baldwin, “until the new generation has grown up and has learned to tread in their loot-

steps. “To the rising generation I say: Every time you look on a Avar memorial make this resolution: That us those men Avent to their death, so you Avili go to your life.” The new toAver is the most striking feature of the new building, erected at a cost of £OO,OOO, and including a town hall Avhicli perpetuates the memory of Air Brooke Robinson, for 20 years M.P. for Dudley.

Oa'c-i- the entrance to tho memorial chamber containing the names of 700 men of Dudley, who gave their lives in the Great War, are inscribed the following lines, specially written by the late Thomas Hardy:—

“If you think,-have a kindly thought If you speak, speak generously

Of those Avho as heroes fought And died to keep you free.”