IMPERIAL WAR GRAVES

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26283, 30 November 1950, Page 3

IMPERIAL WAR GRAVES

VISIT BY SECRETARY OF COMMISSION FILM OF CEMETERIES SCREENED “It is said that one can judge a former civilisation by its monuments. Can posterity infer from our war graves what sort of people we were? L am sure they will see the importance we attach to the individual man and woman, and that we believed in individual freedom combined with orderliness.” With these words, Brigadier F. Higginson, secretary of the imperial War uraves Commission, introduced a film of the cemeteries under his charge which was shown at a public meeting in Christchurch yesterday. On a one-day visit to Christchurch, Brigadier Higginson visited local cemeteries and met representatives of organisations interested in war graves. He and Mrs Higginson lunched with the Governor-General (Sir Bernard Freyberg) at "Daresbury.” Brigadier Higginson joined the Royal Montreal Regiment in 1914 and served in Europe throughout the First World War. he was seconded to the Imperial War Graves Commission in November. 1918. as an architect, and was appointed Chief Administrative Officer to the commission’s Central European District in 1928. Ten years later, he took up the post of Director of Works at the commission’s headquarters in London. He was appointed secretary to the commission in November. 1947. Tne commission, founded in 1917, was the first Commonwealth agency which embodied the principles of equal co-operation among tha Commonwealth countries, said Brigadier Higginson. In spite of constitutional changes in Commonwealth relationships this basis had been retained. Representatives of the member countries formulated the commission’s policy, assisted by men distinguished tn public life Deaths in Two Wan The Commonwealth death roll in the 1914-18 and 1939-45 wars totalled 1,600,000, - said Brigadier Higginson, ihe appalling carnage in the first war resulted in 1,104,890 men of the Commonwealth forces being killed; the total from the recent war, which was a war of movement, was much lower, in the recent war. too. there were only 150.000 dead (including about 40,000 who lost their lives at sea) who had no place of burial, compared with ihe 500.000 of the 1914-18 war. The commission had under its control uOO.OOO graves of men of the first war and 150,000 craves of those who served in the recent war. The first effort to record the burial places of the fallen in 1914 was done oy a small unit of the Order of St. John. Ihe commission took over the (task, and now its work was on such a scale that a fund of £6.000,000 w«>s needed to finance it, said Brigadier -iigginson. The film, in colour, was designed to give the public in New Zealand and other Commonwealth countries an idea of the work of the commission. It showed a few of the 2000 war cemeteries and plots in Europe and the Middle East. The poppies of Flanders and English roses bloomed side by side in many of the pictures of the 1914-18 graves. Many of the graves of the recent war still had the temporary wooden crosses, which would be replaced by headstones. Brigadier Higginson concluded. “Nearly all of us are connected directly or indirectly with our illustrious war dead,’’ said the Mayor of Christchurch (Sir Ernest Andrews), who welcomed Brigadier Higginson.