Youths Shout At Veterans

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30764, 31 May 1965, Page 14

Youths Shout At Veterans

Three youths tried to disrupt the dismissal ceremony at the South African War Veterans’ Association Vereeniging Day celebrations in Christchurch yesterday. The youths, aged about 16, shouted marching orders at the parade of elderly veterans when it returned to the Christchurch R.S.A. rooms in Gloucester street after a wreath-laying ceremony at the Queen Victoria statue in Victoria square. About 20 men and women who had taken part in the Boer war were in the parade, some limping and some leaning on sticks. Some veterans of World War I also took part. After the march of about 600 yards from Victoria square behind the band of the 2nd Battalion, Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment, the parade was halted and dressed by the commander of the band (Captain D. I. Williams).

The youths, who were passing by and were probably unaware of the significance of the occasion, started to shout orders. No-one in the parade took any notice, and as the youths walked away, still

shouting and laughing, Cap? tain Williams dismissed the veterans and they filed into the R.S.A. rooms. The parade commemorated the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging on May 31, 1902, and the end of the Boer War. At the reception Captain Williams promised that even when the Boer War veterans became too frail to parade on Vereeniging Day, the band would continue to parade. The Mayor (Mr G. Manning) said the celebration gave the opportunity to the present generation to pay its respects to men and women who had contributed to the nationhood of New Zealand. The parade also acted as a monument, for children seeing it would ask their parents what it was for, and so the tradition would be passed on.

“The self-saerifice, courage, and devotion which inspired those who fought in that war of long ago are qualities which need to be fostered among our people today,” he added. “All war, though it may so often seem to be necessary to halt some national or international lawlessness, is still fioolish because the problems it solves always create still greater problems,” Canon R. O. Williams, chaplain to the Canterbury branch of the South Africa War Veterans’

Association, told the parade. “It is a sad commentary on the progress of humanity that your grandchildren stand today where you stood at the turn of the century, in the throes of soul-searching and indecision,” Canon Williams said. “Some of you experienced that agony again in 1940, and your sons and daughters in 1940. “Now again our country is at war, and you have lived to see irrefutably that each generation must learn through fire and tears that all the courage and self-sacrifice generated by war are wasted unless peace calls forth the same dedication. “The history books would say that yours was a foolish war—that it arose out of the question of civic rights or no civic rights for a few thousand British subjects drawn by a gold rush to the mines of the Transvaal. And all war is still foolish, because the problems it solves always create still greater problems. “If a gathering like this means anything to us today, it should evoke our gratitude that there are always men

who are willing to give themselves for the cause of humanity. We fail them and the whole world family if we remain unwilling to offer sheer courage and sacrifice for the task of sharing our freedom, the best religion, and God’s bounty to us, to those who try to exist where injustice, ignorance, and poverty reign.”