WHITE ENSIGN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 42, 18 August 1941, Page 8

WHITE ENSIGN

SYMBOL OF IDEALS

NOT FOR PRIMITIVE MIND

NEVER A TOTEM POLE

"Let this Ensign which the primitive mind could never have appreciated, conjure up in your minds and in your imaginations the ideals and principles which it has borne against the fierceness of our enemies, and then you can never forget that in your own lives, as well as in those of all who have served under it, ervice and sacrifice are the pre-eminent demand which Almighty God makes upon every one of us." ,

With tms thought, the Venerable Archdeacon Bullock, Archdeacon of Wellington and Vicar-General of the Wellington Anglican Diocese, concluded a sermon he delivered at St Michael's £nd All Angels', Kelburn, yesterday morning, when he dedicated a White Ensign of H.M.S. Achilles, presented to the church on behalf of Commodore W. E. Parry by Lieuten-ant-Commander Ashby. The flag, which was flown by- the cruiser during the convoying of New Zealand troops, will be hung in the church. Some of the Kelburn parishioners, including the vicar, the Rev. G. M. McKenzie. have served in the Achilles.

Archdeacon Bullock said that every springtime, when he, caught the first scent o* the lilac, he was transported at once, for more than forty years, and many thousands of miles, to a room in which a man lay dying. "I see his gaunt figure on the bed linen, the ministering, women all about him, and myself, a little lad, standing there to receive a message," he continued "And over it all, and pervading everything, the strong, pungent scent of lilac after the rain. Again, I never catch a certain song, or hear it over the wireless, without being transported over many years to another part of England, where I see a man standing, debonair and well clothed, with his red silk handkerchief hanging out of his pocket, a lady at the piano playing the accompaniment, the disposition of the furniture in the drawing-room, the movement of the curtains in the summer breeze, and the sun filtering through the windows.

VALUE OF MATERIAL THINGS

"These memories are particular and personal, and they are of no moment to anyone except perhaps myself, but I mention them in order to remind you that each one of you has had similar experiences. We each know some scene, some .sight, some event, something that appeals to one of the five senses, that immediately calls up an association with ideals, dreams, and memories. And so we come to see that the world is so constituted, its economy so formed, and most men so built that even material things have a far greater value than they have in themselves for themselves. The lady's wedding ring, for instance, is much more than so many pennyweights of gold. And each one of you, at a scent, at the sound of a bell, at a footfall a certain passage, at the click of a latch, at the touch, or even the taste, of something, will be transported, and I will have this sense contact renewed by a series of memories enriched with ! a halo of wonderful idea*- and ideals.

"Now these, as I said, are personal and peculiar. But there are things that are not merely personal, things that belo s to a people, to a nation, and though each one of us may see this object, or experience it from some particular angle, yet to one and all this object speaks, and round it there are haloes of memories, traditions, dreams', and ideals. When Browning, for instance, was sailing for Italy past Cape St Vincent he could not help thinking of Nelson and Trafalgar, and saying, 'Here and here did England help me—how shall I help England?'. And no one, I suppose, of our race, could walk into Westminster Abbey without being conscious of forms and figures and ghostly shades which come to life and people our sense of history. The American, returning to his home country, could not catch the first glimpse of the Statue, of Liberty without being reminded of great principles and great struggles to attain them.

SIGNIFICANT MEMORIES

"Heather is nothing unless you can see ten miles of it at one sweep. The Scotsman who treasures a little bit of it is not thinking of the value of the heather itself, but it opens a door into a narrow glen where there is a cottage, the sheltering shoulder of a hill, other hills beyond, with the road winding beyond them, and the' skyline etched clearly for ever on his mind. But even this is not all; he thinks of Scotland, its loves, its hates, and its storied history. The poet who wrote the lines 'Breathes there the man with soul so dead, who never to himself hath said, this is my own, my, native land,' was speaking of one of the most barren parts of the British Isles. Yet it is redolent with memories, with ideals,, with loves, with struggles* These memories have significance, and they are always gathered round some material object.

"It may be that there are some to whom the object speaks of nothing but itself. To Peter Bell, the half-wit, the primrose by the river bank, 'a yellow primrose was to him,' and it was nothing more, but when Tennyson plucked his flower from a crannied wall he could not help saying, 'If I could under, stand, root and branch and all, I should understand both God and man.' So this flower opens a door which lies in vistas that are beyond the stars and avenues, that reach beyond infinity. There is indeed no end to the richness that may surround some one particular object of our regard.

HALO OF ASSOCIATION

"And so it may be that some people, in a fit of ignorance, say that to respect a banner is a mark of a primitive mind. Yob may depend upon it that it is the mark of the most highly cultured mind. For if we can, by at that object, win through to the memories which it can open to us, then there is all the difference between man that is created in God's own image,and the beasts that perish. It lies in that halo of associations pointing to things which are better than the thing itself.

"It was just this that made the great Master of life, knowing what is in man. take the common acts and motions of a meal and say, 'Do this in remembrance of Me.'

"So then we come to regard the Ensign which we have dedicated this morning as a material object, but one which carries with it a halo of memories and meanings.

"While they are there, it can never be a totem pole. It can never mean something which does not matter, and which appeals only to the primitive mind.

"It stands for two things, service and sacrifice. We may, as. we ■ see it hanging in tliis church, draw our own little pictures. We may see the lean grey ship making its way round some promontory Qr pushing its inquisitive nose