PILGRIMS ANNOYED
Red Tape On Battlefield Tour. AUSTRALIANS IN TRANCE. (Australian and N.Z. Press Association.) LONDON, August 1. In connection with the Australian Pilgrims' inspection of the battlefields one incident caused some annoyance. Tlio pilgrims were detained for 90 minutes in the rain by French Customs officials, who minutely searched them at the frontier between Belgium and France. Workers who were leaving the Menin factories congregated and made insulting references to "money-making foreigners" who had prospered as a result of French sacrifices. A former Australian soldier thereupon replied: "Then it is a' pity we ever fought." The scene which followed was unprecedented. The pilgrims toured the battlefields and saw the graves of millions of the slaughtered soldiers. One delegate remarked: "If the delegates to the League of Nations were to see this sight they would give up petty bickering." One mother who saw the graves of her two sons at the Somme and Ypres fervently declared that "only fiends could favour wars after seeing those cemeteries."
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Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 181, 2 August 1929, Page 7
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166PILGRIMS ANNOYED Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 181, 2 August 1929, Page 7
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