PEACE

Hokitika Guardian, 15 December 1930, Page 5

PEACE

STRIKING SPEECH. OBSERVATIONS BY VETERAN SOLDIER. (Official Wireless.) RUGBY, December 11. The veteran soldier, Field-Mar-shal Sir William Robertson made a striking speech on the maintenance of world peace, when yesterday lie nnveiled at Holywood, Southampton, the last of five memorials erected in Britain to the officers and men of the forces who' fell during the war and whose graves are unknow. “Such ceremonies,” lie said, “remind us of ihe vast sums still being expended upon armaments, and despite the enormous sacrifices in the Great AVar, including no fewer than 9,(100,000 lives, many people think that wars will continue to recur. Fortunately the picture has another side. AVar as a means of .settling international disputes is now more universally condemned as a failure than ever before, and every day it becomes more evident that there are no really foreign nations, but that,the interests of all are so closely interwoven that if one nation suffers, all will suffer to some extent. “Undoubtedly the maintenance of great and costly armaments is not the first essential measure required to prevent war. By far the most importan 1 requirement is less jealousy and less selfishness in the conduct of . international affairs. That spirit is, we may hope, now gradually appearing, and when it is adequately forthcoming and not till then, disarmament will follow rapidly and easily enough, and the nations will at last be on the road to peace and goodwill. THE GRANDEST MEMORIAL.

“The successful attainment of. sucli a result would be the grandest war memorial that could be erected, and it ought not to be lightly denounced in advance as fantastic, or impossible, and so bring both civilisation and Christianity into contempt.” The memorial he unveiled is dedicated especially to those who went down in vessels torpedoed, or mined, in Home waters, but its records also include the names of others who died at Home, or in distant areas, and whose bodies could not be recovered among them Lord Kitchener, whose name figures on the. first panel. Sir William Robertson described Kitchener as the principal organiser of victory, who, alone, saw that the war would be one of long duration, and who was the most outstanding and trusted personality' in the Allied AVar Councils. “Kitchener never disclosed within my experience the ruthless and domineering disposition which some attribute to him.”