MAORI WAR MEMORIAL

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 20, 24 January 1924, Page 3

MAORI WAR MEMORIAL

TO TH« EDITOR.

Sir, —The concluding paragraph o! thw article under above heading,, appearing in your to-night's (Anniversary Day) issue, reveals an apparent unwillingness on the part of the Mayor of Lower Hutt (Mr. W. T. Strand) to accede to th 9 very right, as well as respectful, request of the Department of Internal Affairs to have returned to its original, site, in the Bolton street cemetery, the memorial raised therein by Lieutenant Page and other regimental comrades to the sacred memory of Sergeant Ingram, (m particular) and those several other comrades of his (unnamed thereon) who died in defence of their military post ?Lu ?r lcott' s Farm> Lower Hutt; -on 16th May, 1846, when a raid was made upon it by a superior force of rebel natives dispatched from the Horokiwi Valley stronghold of that astute and crafty warribr chieftain Rangihaeta, th'ea being penned-up in his lair at Pahautanui by. some two hundred Imperial troops of the- regiment named. Granting the protest from Wellington to be, as' Mayor Strand asserts somewhat late in the day," the desire of himself and other possible municipal supporters in domg late,justice to the' regimentally world-Tenowned "Bugler'" Allen, for instance, by removing to the historic spot" so near their everyday avocations land meditations" a monument (if neglected) bearing thereon but the name of Sergeant Ingram—whose crave plot Would henceforth and forever re main unmarked, and ever unremembered by sight of a memorial at least still in its near vicinity—would not only seem a late-m-the-day" afterthought of theirs to secure a little personal Kudos for"their borough and its citizens, but "a cheapfas it at the same time 'almost priceless ) memorial as well!

That such is not the case 1 know full well; but as his satirical remark—"Then suddenly someone woke up and-found they wanted the ston^ in Wellington"--is the best compliment he seemingly can pay the only two. .correspondents, Mr Edwards^and myself, of your journal to awaken the Mayor and citizens 'of Wellington to a. sense of duty on their part in not permitting so great a .sacrilege, as was already connived: at unknown to the latter, Mayor Strand perhaps might better appreciate than sentiment" when Written this way.—l am, etc., 22nd January.