INSCRIPTIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 17, 20 January 1940, Page 19

INSCRIPTIONS

[EXAMPLE OF GREECE

WELLINGTON'S MEMORIAL

(Written for the "Evening Post"

by AM.)

So'j.th.ey! gave'their bodies to the commonwealth, arid received, each for his own memory, praise that will never die, and with It the noblest sepulchre, not that In which their mortal bones are laid, but a home In the minds of men. ; So runs the inscription that has been chosen for the memorial to the Wellington pioneers that is to be opened and: dedicated oii Petone Beach next Monday; January 22, Wellington's birthday. It comes from one of the most famous:1 speeches in all history, the funeral, oration of Pericles over men who died for Athens in the fifth century,B.C. Why was it chosen? We may begin ft 6 answer this question by noting that the same speech was drawn upon * for • the inscription that is cut in the stone above the pillars on the front of the War Memorial Museum in Auckland, perhaps the; noblest monument in this, country. Indeed the passage chtfsen for Wellington runs into the . AufcKla'nd V inscription: "The whole earth is the sepulchre of famous men; they are commemorated, not only by the columns and inscriptions in their own -country, but in foreign lands also, by memorials graven, not in stone, but in'.'tiie'hearts of men." Why do we go to the Greeks for such expressions of remembrance? Because the v Greeks said certain things supremely well. Everybody who had the 'good-fortune to be present will remember the opening ceremony at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, when in v rnoviLrig words the GovernorGeneral, Sir Charles Fergusson, took the 'assembly, back to ancient Athens, an,d; aslsed them to imagine citizens going^fo &! 'beautiful place beyond the wg|ls--TSUCh as the Domain would be if inner; Auckland were walled—and thg&e,' as-part of the funeral rites, listieriing:-to an orator extol the devotion; of those who had died in battle. Th.e4scene that day, with the hill of cornnjemoration looking out on blue wal^sVlhati'Stretcjieci away among islanifis,fewoul'd^: have appealed to the ancient-Greek, himself so much a child of the sea, an explorer, and a coloniser. The Doric columns of the memorial, a form of architecture so familiar to him. rose in a land far beyond the confines of his known world, and the patriotism of Pericles spoke to a young nation in a strange " tongue. And now tljiip^capital of that nation goes to the same .source for words to place upon its Centennial memorial to its founders. The men of Auckland fell in \yar; against their country's foes. Save for. Brief acquaintances with war, which touchedieinly the fringes of their settlement, trf^tnen and ■yeomen of Wellingtopvpion?ere;d.,in peace; but they chose tb^five/^ajti^rously. They ventured atitdss the world in small ships to a far'distant country that lacked government and offered them no certainty of a home or even oi safety. They fought witrf~hatureV isolation, and poverty; ijouti^ed- a-city ana a province; and Helpld to establish'a nation. ■■"■-. ' it ;i|ah extraordinarj 1 tribute to the Greek 'genius for words that two major meinorfals; in • this remote country—a Greekless land it was called by a professor of classics—should be so in-r scribed...;Mpre famous ever* than the '\vords of Pericles are the lipes that : siniohfdes ijvrote over the men who feiFat Thermopylae: • G0,.. .toll- w§!:. Spartans, tljou that passest by. 'Jhaf here . obedient to their laws; we lie. :■ Not very impressive, you may say. The Greek epitaph, however, is much more difficult to translate than the tper'iqds of Pericles; in fact, this tribute, :by general-consent the finest or one pf':the very' finest of its kind, is acknowledged to be untranslatable. It ;has bsen described as "an instance of Jthe;.; famous Laconic, brevity, whose iyirtue it was to, cut at once to the heart -of^hihgs." -iWhen; after the World ■■Waif,: a London paper offered a prize ■for .:-the. best collection of three war : memorial inscriptions, one of the winI mag-passages was Homer's description :of Sleep.arid Death bearing home from Troy the body of Sarpedon. : v Vast .as. is this field, from Homer the Bible and Shakespeare to ; contemporary writers, it is often difficult to find suitable inscriptions. They shouldJ/be short, dignified, if not noble, easily understood, arid to. the point. The ■ preference for long comprehensive so' evident in English chutenyards and cathedrals, has wellnigh disappeared. The particularised length ..of the inscription on the grave rof the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey has been compared unfavourably with the terseness of the words on the corresponding, grave under -the Arc deTriomphe. Universality may not always be possible or desirable, but it may give great strength to a tribute. No specific city or nation is mentioned in the two passages from the Pericles oration, or in the words chosen by Kipling for the graves of British soldiers —"Their name liveth for evermore"; or in the sentence from Samuel that is-written over the door of the' Auckland War Memorial Museum: "They were a wall unto us both by night and day." This quality is seen in another notable inscription in Auckland, perfect of its kind. It is carved over a fine stone memorial shelter beside St. Paul's Church: "Remembering these dead, let the living be humble." There are numbers of glorions passages in prose and verse which, while admirable in sentiment, will not do because they are too long •or too diffuse. An inscription should strike home at once. When it has the universal touch it gains in power through bringing us all into a great brotherhood of achievement and sacrifice that transcends nationality and time. : Our own time can supply fine tributes. Kipling had a rare gift for such expressions.- The most quoted and quotable poet of his time, he had an astonishing range of application, from the homely advice of his barrack-room ballads to the grave eloquence of his address at Edinburgh University on "The Scot and the War": -.'.,. The sons of your University were cohstiiHiieil. like their forbears, so to use tliem"'selvcs in 'matters of conscience as they should answer io their Maker. AM earth has wit.iicssed that they answered as befitted their ancestry': that ..they endured as the strong in.fl ire life's about tbeir youth had taught them to endure. They willingly and wittingly left tlie imrpose of their lives unachieved in order that all life should not be wrenched from Its