PORT SAID MEMORIAL

Manawatu Standard, Volume LII, Issue 306, 24 November 1932, Page 7

PORT SAID MEMORIAL

UNVEILING CEREMONY. MR AV. M. HUGHES’S PANEGYRIC. THE MEN OF SINAI. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) PORT SAID, Nov. 23. The Northampton Regiment, which is allied with the 43rd and 48th Australian Battalions, also the 15th Battalion of the North Auckland Regiprovided the guard of honour for Mr W.. M. Hughes when he unveiled at Port Said to-day the memorial to the Australian Light Horse and other Sinai combatants. King Fuad was represented by his Grand Chamberlain. The principal officers of the British Army and Air Force, the Egyptian Prime Minister, Sidkv Pasha, and other representatives of the Egyptian and Palestine Governments were present. After reviewing the chequered history of the monument, neither of whose sculptors lived to see it completed, Mr Hughes paid an eloquent tribute to those it commemorated.

“To all who pass along the Suez Canal,” ho said, “this monument must make an irresistible appeal, for it tells a story not less enthralling, romantic, and wonderful than the Odyssey itself. “Tlie most sluggish imagination must be fired by a recital of the journeyings of young warriors from thier far-off homes to this ancient land. Bred in remote countries in an environment of perfect peace, those who had never heard a shot fired in anger came to fight in the greatest war in history and proved themselves bom fighters, facing tho rigours of a stern campaign in Palestine and Syria. “Their buoyancy of spirits rose triumphant. Their belief in ultimate victory never weakened. Their’s indeed is a deathless story.” Mr Hughes also paid a tribute to the Australian Flying Corps, which the monument also commemorates, saying that Lord Allenby’s masterly strategy culminating in the battle at Armageddon owed much to the Australian airmen destroying enemy machines and making reconnaissance impossible. “The men we commemorate to-day,” he said, “made and changed history. Though their bones are bleached by desert suns, and their bodies are covered by foreign soil, their spirits live and their memories will remain fragrant through the a"es. ” Major J. N. Stubbs, formerly of Auckland, now Director of the Lands Department in Palestine, represented New Zealand at the ceremony and placed a wreath on the monument.

MARVELLOUS BROADCAST. WORLD-WIDE AUDIENCE. They were indeed very privileged listeners who last evening were able to hear the ceremony broadcast in its entirety from the banks of the Suez Canal and those who were not inwardly touched by the overwhelming magnificence of the relay must have been few. One of the most ambitious broadcasts yet undertaken in the Southern Hemisphere, it was also the most impressive and significant. East and West had perhaps never been so tangibly bound together as when the speech of kinsmen 16,000 miles away filled the homes of thousands of people here within about l-12th of a second after leaving the lips of the' speakers —indeed before those on the outskirts of the congregation heard it. Tlie orders given to the members of the troops who formed the guard were clearly heard with characteristic crispness, while the National Anthem and the hymn “O God, Our Help in Ages Past” were unprecedentedly clear. The prayer of Rt. Rev. Bishop Gwynne, Chaplain-General of Egypt and the Sudan agd deputy chaplain to the forces during 1915-19, was remarkable from the moment he uttered the words “Let us give thanks to Almighty God . . . . ” and as he prayed for the bereaved and led in the Lord’s Prayer. The speaker who introduced Mr W. M. Hughes, who wns Premier of Australia from October 1915 to February 1923, stated that Mr Hughes’s “presence would be valued by the distant audience who were following the proceedings of the ceremony.” Speaking of the men who came “.from the vast plains of Australia and the mountains and lakes of New Zealand,” he said that, “we know what they did; their names and fame are inscribed in the annals of tho Empire.” They had fallen on the “soil of tbe Gallipoli Peninsula, the slopes of Sinai, the hills of Judea and the land of Moab . . . They never faltered.”

Mr Hughes was more crisp in his speech and not so easily distinguishable through the surging signals. When ho unveiled the memorial at 10.59 p.m. New Zealand time, the orders to the guard were clearlv heard, while the blessing and the Benediction were remarkably distinct. The “Last Post” and “Reveille” were most impressive in their penetrating clarity. At 11.8 p.m. the ceremony concluded after wreaths had been laid at the foot of the memorial by representatives of various countries.

TECHNICAL SUCCESS. From a technical point of view the relay made history. The route of the signals before they reached New Zealand is most interesting. From Port Said a telephone line conveyed the speech from the microphones about 75 miles to Cairo, whence a radio telephone circuit conveyed it to London. Received there it went by land line to the British Post Office’s radio transmitter which sent the signals through space to Australia. At La Perouse, out of the city of Sydney, the signals were received at the overseas terminal and sent to the General Post Office. For Australian listeners a land line took the signals to the Market Street studios of the Broadcasting Commission and then out again to the transmitter at Pennant Hills. The entire Commonwealth was linked up with thousands of miles of telephone lino for a “national network” broadcast. For New Zealander's, the signals went a further 1200 miles to be picked up at 'Wellington and relayed to 2YA through the Wellington Post Office. Thence about 1000 miles of land line carried the ceremony to the homes of listeners from the North Cape to the Bluff. Of particular interest is the fact that, although the various places in the world heard the signals in less than a second, there were vast differences in the times at the principal places. It was 12.30 a.m., lunch time, in Cairo, 10.30 a.m. in London, 8.30 p.m. in Sydney, 6.30 p.m. in Perth and 10.30 p.m. summer time in New Zealand. To enable the broadcast to be made there had to be co-operation by the Egyptian and English Post Office authorities, the Postmaster-General’s Department in Australia and the New Zealand Post Office. The remark of the Sydney announcer at the conclusion that, “truly we live in a wonderful age,” was justified indeed.