“War Memorials a Wicked Expense”

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 52, 24 May 1927, Page 1

“War Memorials a Wicked Expense”

OUTSPOKEN MINISTER APPEAL FOR THE LIVING (Special to TEE SUN.) CHRISTCHURCH, Monday. THERE Is a misguided patriotism x abroad which aims to honour the fallen men of the Great War; but needless and wicked expenditure of thousands of pounds on war memorials tends to dishonour rather than honour the dead. So spoke the Rev. L. B. Neale, preaching last evening at a broadcast service in the Rugby Street Methodist Church, and appealing for succour for the dependents of those in whose honour the memorials were erected — people left to the battle of life, a battle which would be made easier by the assistance that could be given by the money spent on memorials. "It is good,” he said, “to have beautiful things by way of remembrance, but if we did more beautiful things for the living the« the dead would not be so many, or the living so sad. Disburse your thousands in alleviating these people’s distresses, instead of erecting beautiful columns.' "The dead are in the mansions of glory. Many of their descendants and dependents are in cottages of distress; their children in orphanages; their widows at the washtubs; and thousands of returned men are maimed in body and mind.”