War Memorial Tablet

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 171, 15 April 1932, Page 13

War Memorial Tablet

Sir, —I read with Interest the letter of “Only Disabled” in your issue of the Bth instant, and with him desire to protest against the tablet bearing the names of the War Memorial Committee. It is now many years since the war, but there is always with those who took part in that great struggle the terrible picture of the mood and suffering of Flanders and elsewhere. We have but to consider the sacrifices made by our boys, the mutilations of body and mind, the ruined careers, and the long-drawn-out years of horror through which they went, and the claim of the committee to a “roll of fame” is presumptuous. All this was undergone for the sake of the country they call “Home.” If there are to be names ou the memorial, surely some can be found among those who never returned to that home for which they laid down their lives. In my humble opinion the memorial with its altar is holy, and sacred to the memory of heroes, and not to bad taste and self aggrandisement.—l am, etc., EX-MACHINE GUNNER. Wellington, April 11. Urging that the War Memorial tablet must go, and that there is no excuse for its existence, “Herald” expresses the opinion that as a descriptive record the tablet is inaccurate and a laughing-stock for anyone whose education has advanced boyond primary school standards. “As a work of art” the correspondent addsv “it is hopelessly handicapped by a confused alphabetical mass which makes any aesthetic enjoyment impossible.”