TRIBUTE TO THE BEAD

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 49, Issue 109, 19 February 1929, Page 2

TRIBUTE TO THE BEAD

ENGLISH PUBLIC SCHOOL BOYS. AT NEW PLYMOUTH CENOTAPH. (Special to the "Guardian.") NEW PLYMOUTH, Feb. 18. Forty-live English public schoolboys and their four officers spent the week end in New Plymouth. On their arrival in New Plymouth the party visited the Cenotaph and laid a wreath. Mr J. R. Darling, of Charterhouse School, the head of the party, paid a sincere tribute to the memory of New Zealanders who gave their lives for the sake of the Empire. He said that he thought it was right that they should stop at that spot and he should speak to them in order that at least once while in New Zealand they should recognise the sacrifice New Zealanders made for the Empire in the war. He could not estimate just how much the war might mean to those boys, but to those who had lived through, those years would always remain the most important thing in the lives of the people of this' country, as those of England. The need for sending men may have seemed less in New Zealand than at Home, but Ne\- Zealand responded generously and he wanted theboys to think what the sacrifice made* meant to the people of this country. It meant that if the men lived through the war many would come back to start life over again, as they had to leave their work in the best part of their lives. If they died their bodies would lie thousands of miles from their homes and their people would have only an empty tomb to look upon. As they stood before this cenotaph, which was an exact model of that they all knew'so well, it should give them something to think about., In England and in Pvew Zealand there were certain ideals which the two countries and the t«vo peoples had in common and when the wreath was laid at the steps of the Cenotaph he wanted them silently for a moment to think on [these things.