AT THE TOWN HALL

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 956, 26 April 1930, Page 9

AT THE TOWN HALL

SIMPLE BUT IMPRESSIVE CEREMONY “A PROUD DAY” A great crowd filled the Town Hall yesterday morning, v r hen the citizens’ commemorative service was held. Greenery and white flowers were used for the decoration of the hall, and wreaths and laurel were hung at the front of the gallery. The service was simple hut of a very impressive nature. The Mayor, Mr. G. Baildon, pre- | sided. Among those on tlie stage were the Mayoress, Mrs. A. D. Campbell; Commander N. Clover, representing the .Navy; Brigadier H. R. Potter, officer commanding tho Northern Command; Major-General Sir George Richardson; Mr. A. C. A. Sexton, president of the Auckland Returned Soldiers’ Association; foreign con-

suls and members of the City Council. Mr. J. Maughan Barnett was at the organ and members of the Municipal Choir led the singing. The service opened with the National Anthem, followed by the hymn “O God Our Help in Ages Past.” The Rev. W. W. Averill recited a number of short prayers and the Mayor read the lesson. “Anzac Day is surely one -of the proudest in New- Zealand history,” said the Rev. G. Budd, moderator of the New- Zealand Presbyterian Assembly, who delivered the first address. He said that until Gallipoli there Rad been a feeling that the younger generation in the Dominion were not as their pioneering forefathers had been, that the mild climate of New Zealand had enervated them and made them unfit for the harder tasks. The men of Anzac, and those who enlisted after them with full knowledge of the long and bitter struggle ahead, had shown the world that the people of these southern isles were of the stuff w-hich heroes were made.

The Rev. Dr. J. J. North, who was the other speaker, urged the preservation of Anzac Day as an invisible monument to the fallen—a monument far more precious than pillars and sculptured stones. He believed that no finer commemoration than Anzac Day and the Armistice Day silence had ever been conceived by man. Other hymns sung included “The “Anzac Anthem.” The service concluded with the "Dead March,” “The Last Post” and the “Reveille,” sounded by trumpeters from the Seddon Memorial Technical College, and the benediction, pronounced by Archdeacon Mac Murray.