WAR TRAGEDY RECALLED

Hawera Star, Volume L, 17 May 1930, Page 18

WAR TRAGEDY RECALLED

Handsome Ro

A TRAGEDY of the war which had far-reaching 1 effects is recalled in the great 801 l of Honour 'which was delivered recently to the Liverpool Memorial Committee, to he laid up in the cathedral, says the “Daily Telegraph. ’ ’ One page of the hook contains some twenty names of the pilots who went down in the No. 1 Pilot Boat, the Alfred 11. Read, in the Mersey. At the time she was torpedoed by the enemy she contained all the 'Mersey pilots without exception. The result was that for some time afterwards incoming boats found no pilot available to conduct them through the difficult. Mersey reaches to liivcrpool. But. the fact was wisely concealed, so as not to afford “comfort" to the enemy. The King signed an illuminated inscription on the title page, which reads as follows: They whom this Volume Commemorates were Numbered among Those who, at Hie Call of King and Country, left all that, was dear tc them, Endured Hardness, Faced Danger, and finally Passed out of the 'Sight of Men by the Path of Duty and Self-iSaerifioe, giving up their Lives that Others might live in Freedom. Let others who come after. See to it that their Name be not Forgotten.—George R.I. The 801 l of Honour itself is one of the most majestic productions in the history of books. Weighing over a hundredweight, it consist of 800 vollnm pages, or 400 leaves. As two of these consume a whole skin, it has involved the use of the skins of 200 calves. The size of the book is 22 inches 'by 18, by 8 inches thick, and the book had to be thus planned in order to contain its 42,000 names. Nearly every

1 of Honour

regiment iir the British Army is represented, and most of the ships in the Navy, not to mention a great number in the Mercantile Marine, the Lusitania especially. All V.CPs have a full record l in scarlet,. and the rest are ranged in alphabetical series down a two-column page in a. bold and noble scripe of black Jotter. This has- been done by Mr George Shrooby, the illuminator, who lias taken ten years over the task, and be has enriched the text, with a wealth 'of beautiful symbolic treatment and many appropriate miniatures and heraldic bearings in full colour. Earl Kitchener, a s a: Freeman of the City, receives a splendid page to himself, and here, as elsewhere, the gold florintion. treatment is strikingly handsome. So- are the title-page, half-title, and colophon, all emblematic of the virtues of sacrifice, patriotism, and du tv.

The book, which is believed to be the largest and most imposing of the many rolls of honour that have been installed in various cathedrals, is to be installed in a specially designed bronze case with a glass cover. This will-fill the upper portion of the cenotaph, which is already in position. fhe volume has been bound in cream classic vellum, ornamented with gold, and closes with three solid gold clasps, The binding has boon so contrived that at every page the book will lie open of itself and it is proposed that it shall bo always exposed at some part of the. record.

'Considering that the work has taken ten years to accomplish, and that the inscribing and illumination have had to be done by one pair of hands in order to secure complete consistency, it means that the Memorial Committee must have been among the first in the field in this honourable form of acknowledgment to the nation’s heroes.