ARMISTICE DAY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 November 1940, Page 6

ARMISTICE DAY

NO WHITEHALL CEREMONY THIS YEAR

KING’S DECISION STATEMENT BY ARCHBISHOP j OF CANTERBURY. A DAY OF DEDICATION. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.57 a.m.) RUGBY, October 31. 1 The . King has decided -that the usual Armistice Day service at the Cenotaph shall not be held this year, and the Government feels that in present circumstances it would be preferable that other large services which are customarily held throughout the country should not be held. I In view of the risk of confusion with air raid warning signals, it would not be possible to signal the two-min-ute silence as in previous years. November 11 will, however, be observed as Poppy Day as hitherto, and the British Legion is making the usual arrangements for the sale of poppies in aid of Earl Haig’s fund. x The Archbishop of Canterbury has issued the following statement: “The Government has announced that under present circumstances Armistice Day cannot be observed in the once customary manner. While this is inevitable, there will be a general desire that Armistice Day should not pass without the associations which have so long surrounded it. Therefore it is proposed, with the approval of the King, that Sunday. November 10. should be observed in our various places of worship I and in our hearts and homes as a day j of remembrance and dedication. Re-1 membrance —We shall remember those who fought and died for their country’s cause in the last war, and with them now those who already in the present war have given their lives. Dedication —We shall dedicate ourselves to) the task of finishing, if it may be, the workjwhich the men of 1914/18 sought to do and of doing and giving, our utmost to win the victory of freedom, justice and peace. We shall dedicate our minds and wills even now to the task which will await us when this war is over —the task of bringing in a new and better order of our common life, both national and international, on the basis of Christian faith and loyalty to the Kingdom of God. Truly, by the call of this great time, the most fateful in our history, to each one of us ‘a bond is given that he should henceforth be, .else sinning greatly, a dedicated spirit’.”