REVERENT CROWDS

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 138, 15 May 1925, Page 2

REVERENT CROWDS

QUIET ORDER AND CONTROL. TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT FAULTLESS. The demeanour of the people in the streets was one of quiet purpose. Young and old, men and women showed that they deeply desired to do their part as individuals, to honour the memory of one who has been acclaimed the world over as a statesman and Imperialist of outstanding calibre in modern times. Here and there in the streets were groups of school children wearing their distinguishing badges or dress, Boy Scouts, military and naval officers, aides in State uniform with epauletteß, Ministers of the Crown and members of Parliament, together with prominent civil servants anxiously yet efficiently coping with the arrangements for the greatest obsequies New Zealand has over witnessed Everywhere it was th© same —quiet order and control where great masses of people had to be studied. The traffic management within the city was faultless. Many auxiliary police there were, including a liberal proportion of the Palmerston North force. Local body men, municipal authorities from a distance, and old settlers who had made the journey to pay their final act of homage to the greatest of them all were conspicuous. Go through the crowds where one would one could not help hearing audible tributes to the late Mr Massey —crudely put some of them, but sincere always.

WONDERFUL FLORAL TRIBUTES. Never ha 3 such a glorious wealth of floral tributes been seen assembled in the history of the country. The great silent stream of people which filed reverently through the black and purple draped portals <jf the House of Parliament past the cataialque continued on into the basement. There was a wondrous mass of beautiful and costly wreaths about the coffin but here, arrayed on special trestles several feet high, were banks of hundreds of naturo’s most splendid tributes as well as a number of artificial encased wreaths. They bore the tiatnes of local bodies and publio men, not only from all over the Dominion but from many parts of the British Empire and other countries as well. Uniformed commissionaires kept the crowd moving and thousands passed round the masses of adorned trestles during the forenoon.