ANZAC DAY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 131, 3 May 1940, Page 6

ANZAC DAY.

MODE OF OBSERVANCE. VIEWS OF It.S.A. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, May 2. That no change be made in the observance of Anzac Day was a remit adopted to-day by the annual conference of the R.S.A. An amendment to add the words “and that branches of the association hold no j unctions which are not in accordance with the spirit of Anzac Day,” moved by a aelegate who said the attitude of the association had been “damned hypocrisy,” was defeated. ': t While the proposal to adopt the remit was before the conference Mr G. A. Hayden (Dominion executive committee! said the attitude had been utterly' illogical. “We ask the public of New Zealand to observe it as a Sunday, yet we ourselves deliberately break it,” he said. “On Anzac' Day in Wellington this year we had a dawn service in the schools and a big service ourselves. At night I went to a concert which I enjoyed’ very much, but it was a vaudeville show. If we are going to pass this remit year after year it is up to us to observe it oiirselves. I am very much against the present observance, but if we are going to pass this remit we should be. loyal to it.” The president (Hon. W- Perry, M.L.C.) supported the remarks of Mr Hayden. He had felt for a long time past, he said, that New Zealand’s observance of Anzac Day did mot fit the occasion. He was not sure that it should be observed as a holy day. In Sydney the flags were -hoisted to the mastheads at noon and the, rest of the day was one of pride and glory. After all the returned soldiers in New Zealand did not observe it as a holy day, for after the parades they got together for conviviality in the spirit that the Diggers who had gone would, they knew, wish them to adopt. “If we made a mistake 15, 18 or 20 years ago it is too late to recover that mistake,” said Mr B. J. Jacobs (Dominion vice-president). “If you change the observance you will destroy it altogether.” With the boys whom they had been teaching about Anzac Day sewing overseas a worse time for " a change could not be chosen.