A LIVING MEMORIAL.

Shannon News, 26 August 1921, Page 3

A LIVING MEMORIAL.

AVENUE OF PINE TREES,

; The -Hon. W. H. Triggs, M.L.C., wriimg irom Leura, New aoum Wales, says:— ' , Here in the heart of the beautiful scenery for which the Blue Mountains district‘is,famous, I nave found a, •form of war memorial which seems : worthy of consideration in New Zealand in places where the residents :have not been able to matte up their ' minds as to the best method oi keeping green the memories of their young 'men who lard down their lives m the Great War. It consists of an avenue of trees, each hearing the name of a Leura soldier who lias “gone west." ‘ It- is appropriately called “Lone Pine Avenue,” and is laid out not in : straight lines, but in gracelul curves, i one of which sweeps, round a solitary : pjne, which not only stands for the : name of the : avenue, but also as a general memorial lor the brave lads who did so well m the , war as to give cause for lasting pride and gratitude to the district from which they came. : At the entrance to the avenue, is a stone gateway, the design of which is very effective in its simplicity. A bronze tablet bears the. following in-1 script ion:— “This entrance was erected, and the Avenue planted, by the citizens of Leura in honour of the Leura men who served in the Great War, 1914-18, and whose names are inscribed on the panel opposite. ‘Not once or twice in our fair island story, The path of duty was ; the way to glory.'” ' j At present the trees, which are near-; ly all deciduous, are young saplings, j each carefully protected by a strong fence, and bearing a number for purposes of record, as well as the name of the soldier in whose memory it has been planted. It' needs no great effort of imagination to picture the time | when these shall have grown up into.j a stately grove of remembrances, and the children of to-day, walking up and I down in its gracious shade, will tell .j their children of the men of Leura , who did their duty so well in the j greatest crisis of the Empire. |