CALL TO SERVICE.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19910, 23 April 1930, Page 5

CALL TO SERVICE.

SIGNIFICANCE OF ANZAC DAY. THE TOC H VIEWPOINT. The Rev. O. W. Williams, of Christchurch, who was appointed, at the recent conference of Toe H in Welling" ton, honorary Padre of Toe H, was asked .yesterday by a representative of Thb Press for his views on the fitting observance of Anzac Day. Mr Williams said;—

Anzac Day is specifically a day ot j remembrance of the fallen, and it con- j notes not a glorification of war, but the j very opposite. The movement known j as Toe H, in which I am strongly interested, has, as its basis, the construe- i tive remembrance of, our great loss - tho lives which war has filched from the human stock. Toe H is an endeavour spiritually to recapture tna which has been lost materially. A they are worthily remembered, tn dead live on in those lives where tnei memory is a spur to action. It is tnia building up of a living war memoria in the activo lives of fellows who siancl now where those others stood in > which is the work of Toe H. ; The Memorial of Lives. "Memorials of stone and metal are good, but they are incomplete, me beautiful Bridge of Remembrance flickers across the minds of passers-oy as a thing of light and grace but who really remembers Fred in Gallipolj Tom in Flanders as he passes, If remembrance were real, every hat would come off under that arch, and every baud march in silence. Materia) memorials are not enough. _ I must bo the memorial of lives m which Tom and Fred consciously live again, doing their work through other hands than their own. A Way of Service. "So it will be seen- that Anzac Day stands in our minds as a definite invitation to a way of service—to something like the Toe H way. People or mature mind often forget that the great gestures of ceremony and speech which revitalise their characters and kindle their emotions, very often fax' to connect up in younger minds with anything definite. Thev become merely an invitation to an indulgence of blind emotion, with no healthv outlet tor expressions. Hence it is that such ceremonies of remembrance tend either to morbid and unhealthy states of mind, or with the healthier, and generally the best of the younger minds, they become tedious and so are in time discarded. From this same standpoint, too, the ■ indefiniteness of an attempted mingling of many religious methods in a common service, fail to strike home to the fresh young intelligence, for whom days of memorial are first of all intended. Better that nil should sink t.hpir differences for the moment, and follow some single, not composite, order of religious service. It is only an indication of the unreality of the "remembrance" that this wav has so far not been attempted or achieved. Necessity for Affectionate Bememfcrance. "There never wax a time when effective remembrance was more called for. Those million missing are sorely needed at a time when they would have been maturing, many of . them to leadership in statesmanship, industry, art, and education. The burden of bad timfes, of arrested progress and of the threat of the "coloured" races to white supremacy, would be lightened if not abolished if the energies of the fallen were renewed bv real remembrance in the lives of their sons, and younger brothers —and younger sister* too. / Economists ~liiive toldfus increased production will alone restore the world to industrial health. So stated, how uninspiring it sounds, even how provocative to the lynx-eyed. partisan of labour. But if we see it in this way, that Fred's and Tom's younger brothers are called on to take tin the extra share of the family work which their death in defence of the homo has occasioned, what a fine spur to the heroisms of peace 1 Apd what a deterrent to war 1"