WAR GRAVES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 76, 31 March 1933, Page 9

WAR GRAVES.

COMMISSION'S WORK. FIFTEEN YEARS' TASK ENDED. NEARLY 700,000 HEADSTONES. (By Telegraph.— rress Association.) WELLINGTON, Thursday. Fifteen years' work has brought to an end an important phase of the labours of the Imperial War Graves Commission, whose annual report has been received from England by the Minister of Internal Affaire. The commission has erected 672,000 headstones on graves in 2500 cemeteries all over the world, while 86 memorials to the missing record permanently throughout the world sacrifices made by the Empire in' the Great War. Dealing with its work in New Zealand, the commission states the number of deaths returned during 1932 was 438, the graves of 00 of these being accepted as war graves, bringing the total to 2672. An appendix to the 'report shows that a total of 11,393 graves of New Zealand soldiers were cared for by the commission in various parts of the world, this representing 2.05 per cent of the total graves. Between April 1, 1931, and March 31, 1032, the participating Governments contributed the following cash payments:— United Kingdom, £376,630; Canada £36,507; Australia, £29,400; New Zealand, £9521; India, £4738; South Africa, £4134; British West Indies, £789; Newfoundland, £743. "More than 18 years have passed since, in the early days of the war, some of us, finding British graves in a cemetery behind the La Bassee front, determined, with the support of the Joint War Committee of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, to do all that wae possible to make permanent all the graves in foreign lands of our soldiers, sailors and airmen who fell in the Great War," states the introduction to the commission's report. "From year to year annual reports have told how that work has progressed. In reporting its completion, the commission is conscious of feelings of profound gratitude for the forbearance and sympathy shown to it by the relatives of the dead and for the support and encouragement given to it, not only by the Governments of the Empire, not only by the Governments of the great and small Powers which fought at our side, but also by the innumerable organisations and individuals to whom it has appealed for assistance. "In concentrating now on the hardly less difficult and exacting labours involved in the maintenance of these memorials and cemeteries in many lands, differing in government, religion and civilisation and in physical and climatic conditions, the commission feels secure in the support which has been built up to ensure its future; for during the 15 years that it hae been at work there has been developed a stronger international organisation than has ever before existed."