CARE OF WAR GRAVES

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 180, 28 April 1931, Page 8

CARE OF WAR GRAVES

Work of the Commission £5,000,000 ENDOWMENT Subsequent to the unveiling of the Cross of Sacrifice at the soldiers’ cemetery at Featherston on Saturday, the Hon. P. A. de la Perrelle gave some information of the work connected with the care of soldiers’ graves and the Imperial Commission set up for the purpose. There were, the Minister said, the graves of 16,000 New Zealanders who fell on the field of battle or died of wounds or disease overseas. The care of these graves became part of the duty of the Imperial War Graves Commission, the New Zealand Government undertaking the care of the war graves in the Dominion, including the provision of soldiers’ headstones of a design similar to those over the graves of New Zealanders overseas. Great work had been done by the Imperial War Graves Commission. The history of the commission showed that the Prince of Wales had taken an active interest in the care of graves at the front. In 1927 his Royal Highness addressed a memorandum to the Imperial War Conference then meeting in London, suggesting that the representatives of the self-governing Dominions and all parts of the Empire there assembled, should make arrangements to prevent any neglect of the graves after the war was over. As a result, the Imperial War Graves Commission, consisting of representatives of the Imperial Government and all the Dominions, was constituted. The commission was charged with the duty of designing, laying-out, and constructing the war cemeteries overseas, and with the care of the last restingplaces and memorials of the Empire’s million dead for all time. To ensure beyond doubt so far as was humanly possible that there should be no future neglect of the war graves, an endowment fund of £5,000,000 had been established, the income from which sum it was considered would be sufficient for the maintenance in perpetuity of the cemeteries and memorials. “On nn occasion like this,” concluded the Minister, “I thought it fitting to illustrate how carefully the graves of our fallen were being looked after not only in New Zealand but overseas.”