THE EMPIRE’S DEAD

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 39, 9 May 1927, Page 7

THE EMPIRE’S DEAD

MEMORIAL CHAPEL BUILT ON MOUNT OF OLIVES DEDICATION CEREMONY By Cable.—Press Association.—Copyright LONDON', Saturday. The Jerusalem correspondent o: “The Times” says the High Commis sioner for New Zealand, Sir James Parr, Major-General Sir Edward Chay tor and Brigadier-General T. H. Dodds the Military Adviser to the High Com missioner of Australia, visited Deir belah and inspected the war ceme teries in South Palestine.

The party motored to Gaza, Jaffa and other places and inspected the graves.

They then rejoined Viscount Allenby’s party and witnessed the unveiling of the Stone of Remembrance at the war cemetery at Ramleh.

Lord Allenby paid a tribute to the valour and disinterestedness of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. The noise of war, he said, had resounded in Palestine throughout the ages.

Pointing to a bill visible on the horizon Lord Allenby said it was popularly regarded as being haunted

by many millions of spirits, beca,use it was an immemorial centre of fighting. He prayed that the lives of those men now lying in the cemetery, which had been given to end war, would not have been given in vain. The Bishop of Jerusalem, Dr. R. Macinnes, dedicated the cemetery at Ramleh, where 1885 British soldiers, including 60 Australians and 80 New Zealanders, are buried.

Many of the Saint Barnabas pilgrims were present at the ceremony. The War Memorial Chapel, which is on the Mount of Olives, was designed by Sir John Burnet, R.A. It is flanked with curved walls on which the names of the Empire’s missing men are inscribed.

The church has pylons bearing the Australian and the New Zealand coat of arms. New Zealand Memorial

Inside the chapel is the mosaic gift from New Zealand, which was designed by Mr. R. Arming Bell. It contains six figures symbolical of Victory, Peace, Patriotism, Faith, Humanity and Hope. After he had unveiled this memorial Sir James Parr said it was the good fortune of the New Zealanders to have served under both Lord Plumer and Lord Allenby, whose names were household words in the Dominion. Dominion’s 100,000

New Zealand had sent 100,000 troops to the war, of whom none were more efficient than the mounted men, who were fully entitled to their country’s magnificent memorial mosaic. “This scene,” he said, “fires the imagination and thrills the soul.

“Here, on the Mount of Olives, Britain and her children, who under God’s providence in 1918 liberated the Holy Land from the Turk, have reared a beautiful temple dedicated to the men who fought the good fight and restored to Christendom its ancient cradle.

“New Zealand Is proud of her sons who played a not inglorious part in that liberation.”

“The Times,” in an article on the unveiling of the memorial chapel, says there is no more historic site than the Mount of Olives.

The paper pays a tribute to the New Zealand gift given in honour of her splendid cavalrymen, whose commander,, Sir Edward Chaytor, was associated with Sir James Parr in the ceremony at Ramleh.—“Times.”