PROPOSED WAR MEMORIAL.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 9, Issue 563, 3 September 1920, Page 2

PROPOSED WAR MEMORIAL.

When dealing with the Pukekohe I war memorial proposals in our last \ issue we would like to have repeated our views in reference to what we considered a suitable form for such an object to take. But there were two reasons for why we were unable to do so, one being that we were pressed for space, and the other that we did not wish to add to the controversial points at issue at that particular stage. Now, • happily, thanks to the fine example of broadminded public and patriotic spirit displayed at the meeting oii Wednesday afternoon, the atmosphere has been clarified very sensibly. It has been decided' that a war memorial shall be erected on the Roulston Memorial Park, and we sincerely trust that it will be of a purely memorial nature, and not something the memorial aspect of which will be likely to be submerged in the factors of pleasure or convenience of the living, as distinct from a lasting and noble* tribute to the memory of the dead. In the supplement to last Saturday's issue of the "Auckland Star" there appeared a very fine article on this subject from the pen of Sir Philip Gibbs, the noted British war correspondent, than whom no man is better fitted to express an opinion on war memorials. Mr. Gibbs, author of "The Soul of the War" (at that date not knighted ( and other I fine works, was in the field from start to finish of the Great War, being in both the German and the Allied lines in Belgium in 1914, when war correspondents were not allowed by the military authorities to be in - the front areas. And he stayed with the army to the end, and was always in the most active sec-tors. The morning after the taking of Bapaume in 1918 a member of the present liter-

ary staff of "The Franklin and Pukekohe Times" (then belonging to the New Zealand Rifle Brigade) met Mr. Gibbs among the ruins of the town, and had a congenial interview with him, coming away convinced that this man, at anyrate, had grasped the true spirit of the war, and was well endowed with the qualities necessary to enable him to weave a noble literary tapestry to the memory of the Empire's soldiers. Mr. Gibbs was not a "carpet bagger" or a "dug-out" or "brigade headquarter's" correspondent; he saw things for himself and reported them at first-hand. (He was appointed to represent certain great English dailies, on his merits, and was not a political nominee.) "The war memorial," says this writer, "should be something which should arrest the mind of the passerby with the thought of those young ghosts who must haunt the spirit of the nation for all time unless there is forgetfulncss of .valour and carelessness of tragedy." And again, "the essential spirit of every scheme should be "For Remembrance.'" Sir Philip Gibbs jees in the multiplicity of schemes tnat have sprung up in England, and the tendency to adopt

severely utilitarian objects for the pleasure or convenience of the living, u disastrous tendency to sadly smirch the memory of the dead which every community should hold sacred and unsullied. In biting phrase he speaks of "a danger, hideous to contemplate, of the. whole country being littered with war memorials executed by locnl masons, or by contractors on the town councils, utterly uninspired, vulgar, and common-place in craftsmanship." Let us guard against the materialism which Sir Philip denounces, rise worthily to the occasion and erect a true memorial "For Remembrance.''