ARMISTICE DAY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 December 1938, Page 7

ARMISTICE DAY

OBSERVANCE IN FRANCE.

If the idea of messengers of peace relaying one another carrying a lighted torch from the tomb of the unknown soldier beneath the Arc de Triomphe in Paris to the tomb of the unknown soldier in Berlin has had to be abandoned in these times when cannons are to be preferred to butter and the cultivation of ill-feeling to a gojden opportunity of better understanding, Armistice day in France will nevertheless be honoured in every part of the country and in many ways.

One of these will lake the form of a semi-sporting event. A relay race will be run over a distance of 95 miles from St Anne of Auray by the sea which was chosen because of the memorial there to 240,000 sons of Brittany who fell in the defence of their country in the last war, and Rennes because it is the ancient capital of Brittany and in its Town Hall one of the rooms is a sacred hall to the fallen. The five districts of Brittany—Hie-et-Vilaine, Cotes-du-Nord, Morbihan. Finistere, and Mayenne—will each enter a team. Twenty-six relay points arc foreseen, and 130 runners will take part. They will represent all the athletic clubs of Brittany. In Paris, as in other years, Armistice Day will be celebrated by many ceremonies,\ and the tomb of the unknown soldier will be banked higher and higher with Howers as the day wears on. Torches will be kindled at the flame of remembrance, which burns unceasingly at the tomb, and carried by relays to Douamont, Notre-Dame ck Lorette, Verdun, Arras, and Rheims.

All British war cemeteries in France are visited on Armistice Day every year by the local authorities, generally headed by the mayor and a delegation of French ex-soldiers of the war, and a floral wreath laid at the foot of the cross of sacrifice standing in even British cemetery. Children always accompany those taking part, so that they may not forget the debt of gratitude tc their country's ally.