HONOUR OUR DEAD

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 55, Issue 32705, 26 April 1946, Page 5

HONOUR OUR DEAD

LT. COL. HEDGE’S ADDRESS THE EMPIRE IS FREE “THEIR NAME LIVETH FOREVER” “The Second Great Wai- is past—a war that has tried through and through every quality and mystery of the 'human mind and the might of human spirit: the war that will close, we hope, forever the long ghastly story of the arbitrament of men’s differences by force; the last clash and crash of earth’s millions is over now. There can be heard only sporadic conflicts, and the moan of prostrate nations, the cries of the bereaved and desolate the struggling and exhausted peoples to rise and stand and move onwards. We live among the ruins and echoes of “another Armageddon.” It’s shadow is already receding slowly backward, into history,” said Lieut. Col. S. J. Hedge speaking at the Anzac Day services held in Paeroa on Thursday.

“At this time the proper occupation of the living is first to honour our heroic dead—next to repair the havoc, human and material that surrounds us and lastly to learn aright and apply with courage the lessons of the war,” continued the speaker. ‘(Here in this town of 'Paeroa, in this much favoured country of New Zealand, we meet again at the foot of the memorial to our country’s dead erected to the glorious memory of those who paid the supreme sacrifice in a previous war—may its symbolism include those of a later date.

“They lie in earth which has' resounded to the drums and trampling of many conquests—in lovely places not previously included in mighty human conflicts: but they all rest in the quiet of God’s acre with the brave of all the world.

“At death they • sheathed, in their hearts the sword of devotion and from far off stricken field and lovely desert and isle they hold aloft its cross of sacrifice, mutely beckoning those who would share their immortality. “No word can add to their fame, nor so long as gratitude holdls a place in men’s hearts, can our forgetfulness be suffered to detract from their renown. For as the war dwarfed by its magnitude all contests of the past, the splendour of human heroism reached a height never witnessed before. “Ours we thought prosaic days, when the great causes of earlier times had lost their inspiration, leaving for attainment only the petty passing ipconveniences of the hour, but yet the nobility of manhood had but to hear again the summons to duty and honour to make response which shook the world. Danger to the treasury of common things'—for common things when challenged are the most sacred of all—danger to these things ever Stirred’ our fathers to action, and it has not lost its appeal to their sons. “The United Nations lives, the British Commonwealth of Nations, lives and the Eimpire is free, and New Zealand is the nobler for her sacrifice to help free the world. In many hundreds of plots throughout the hills and valleys, the desert plains and isles of distant countries, from the Pacific Ocean to the Middle East countries, and Europe, lie thousands of our country’s dead. Their resting places have been dedicated forever by the kindly grateful hearts of this young nation of New Zealand, and will be tendered and cared for by us in> the measure of the love we bear’ them.

"Across the leagues- of the world’s oceans the heartstrings of our nation will reach through all time to their graves in far-off lands. We shall never let pass away the spirit bequeathed to us by those who fell “Their name liveth forever,” concluded Lieut. Col. Hedge.