The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 30, 1922. DO WE FORGET?

Taranaki Daily News, 30 August 1922, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 30, 1922. DO WE FORGET?

There was a simplicity and dignity .about the unveiling ceremony on Sunday in connection with the Oinata memorial to the manhood of the district who made I the supreme sacrifice in the Great War which was peculiarly appropriate to such a solemn and memorable occasion. The dominant feeling on the part of those who erected the memorial, those who iVere present at the unveiling, and all others interested in this and similar memorials, is the desire to do honor to men who died for their country and their fellow citizens. It is not a ease of hero worship, but of giving evidence for all time that so far as it is possible to testify how highly these sacrifices are regarded by the community, these memorials shall stand as silent witnesses that the people were one at heart in the desire to keep fresh the memory of the men who fell, so that their example may be an inspiration to succeeding generations. All the districts where such memorials have been erected ai’e to be congratulated on their patriotic action, but as time goes on, and the manifest privilege of giving proof that the people do not forget to honor the glorious dead is only partially in evidence, it becomes a duty to ascertain why the tribute has not by now been universal. In the course of his remarks at the Omata ceremony, Colonel C. H. Weston touched on this point when he said “it was significant that in Taranaki, up to the present, all the memorials had been raised in country districts. - . . . and that no town in the province had yet placed a memorial to those who died in the war.” It is not that the people of the towns forget—or ever will forget

—what is due to their young manhood who fell in the war. The people in the rural districts are accustomed to co-operate; they make up their minds to do a thing, and do it. In the. towns, however, although there is not a whit less patriotism, there are differences of opinion and diversified interests. Some people want one kind of memorial, while others have a different scheme; some favor one site, and others disagree. Then, again, as in the ease of New Plymouth, when preliminary differences are adjusted, impediments are raised by public bodies, on some point or another that could easily be overcome if there was less regard shown for formalities and red-tapism. The consequence is that what should have been the first duty of the citizens after the close of the war remains neglected, and a standing reproach to all concerned. The real value of these war memorials should be their evidence of spontaneity of feeling and action on the part of the present generation, and no further time should be lost in New Plymouth in giving permanent shape to the. memorial.