TRIBUTE TO NEW ZEALANDERS

Hawera Star, Volume LIII, 30 September 1933, Page 11

TRIBUTE TO NEW ZEALANDERS

, Le Quesnoy Garden of Remembrance

~|~N an article published in August unthe heading “Prom the Uttermost Parts of the Earth,’’ in the Paris “Figao, ’’ the writer, M. Raymond Lecuyer, tells of the taking of Le Quesnoy by the New Zealanders, and describes the Garden of 'Remembrance. The article is written in French. Translated it reads: “The Germans in 1914 decided, quite apart from archaeological considerations, to possess themselves of Le Quesnoy. They established themselves there on August 25. During all the four years the little town, defended by its moat and by the wellcaleuilaited angles of itis ramparts, seemed impregnabe. And then one beautiful morning there occurred the episode which enchants us and stirs us, an episode tit for a medieval epic; the New Zealanders made an assault upon Le Quesnoy. Yes, an assault. Hung up their ladders, and climbed the wall of the escarpment, in the manner of the Middle Ages-.” M. Leeuyer then speaks of the marble plaque set in the walls below the point where the first New Zealanders scaled them. But the remembrance amid the admiration of our Allies has found a form mb re delicate and touching. Utilising the uneven nature of the land, the caprice of the watercourse, the murmuring of the trees, they have laid out at the place of' the assault a beautiful garden ihalf-chltivated, half-wild, where the foreign ’.plants! have join'edi with relish to, the green humidity of Flanders.

“In this oasis, where all is poetry and emotion, a great bench of very sober style provides one with an opportunity to rest and meditate —a great bench of stone, on which are engraved the simple words, ‘From the uttermost parts of the earth.’ 1 ‘ Be seated, dream, philosophise. ‘From the uttermost parts of . the earth’ they came, these firiends who sleep to-day in our la,nd, and who in 1918 died, as the soldiers of Richard Coeur de Lion. They camle to defend a country which is rt'he antipodes of theirs, and to save the conception of a civilisation of which .their fathers were ignorant. Think of the singularity of their destiny, of the magnificent obsoleteness of their means of conquest, of the grandeur of their exploit. It is one of those adventures in which one will always regret not to have taken part. “Of this assault, which would inspire the enthusiasm of a Michelet, it is a 1 strange thing, buit it is very difficult to collect the details. In' the disorder of the vicit'Otry, in the dazzling surprise of (the Armistice, the capture of Lb Quesnoy passed almost unnoticed. Nevertheless, how many l'essi admirable episodes have bean consecrated 1 iin literature and in airt? I had' been promised a circumstantial account. Nothing has come. What matter. The ramparts, the slope of the ground, the garden devotedly tended!, and above all, the noble brevity of an: inscription—no : more is needed' most strongly .to sustain the spirit and soul of such an T Iliad.”