LATE M. J. SAVAGE

Hokitika Guardian, 30 April 1940, Page 7

LATE M. J. SAVAGE

PILGRIMAGE TO GRAVE

(Per Press Association —Copyright)

AUCKLAND, April 29

Standing in tranquil silhouette above the glistening harbour, Fort Bastion, the burial place of the late Prime Minister, the lit. Hon. M. J. Savage, is visited almost every day b,- r small groups of men and women. Climbing the steep track from the waterfront road to the headland, they perhaps leave a few flowers outside the entrance to the vault or merely stand quietly for a few minutes in the precincts of the fort.

It was only Inst week that the Public Works Department removed the wilted -wreaths which at the time of the funeral a month ago formed a carpet of colour. Now the sombre brown of the hillside is unrelieved, except for the sterner grey of the gun emplacements and the- colours of a few flowers and ferns laid outside the vault h v some of the visitors this week. No work hast yet been begun on tbe preparation of the site for the memorial which will eventually he erected.

Access to the fort, which is no longin' guarded by police, is confined to the grassy track oxtmding from Hnpfmana Street, pff the waterfront I’oad, the toad through the O aki i goll links, used, by the funeral procession on March 31, being fenced off near tbe burial ground. It is a track Mready worn deep by the shoos of thousands, although its upper levels have received little or no practical construction.