ANZAC DAY OBSERVANCE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 124, 24 April 1940, Page 8

ANZAC DAY OBSERVANCE

25 YEARS SINCE THE LANDING. THE PAST AND THE FUTURE. To morrow will mark the completion of 25 years since the historic landing on Gallipoli Peninsula, an audacious and heroic effort which wrote for tho participants an indelible page in the history of the world’s warfare, page to compare with the annals of Sparta and Greece. To-morrow will tend to remind New Zealand people also of the present mission the Empire has undertaken, a mission which may entail similar great deeds, and one which stands needful of the same spirit as that shown by the soldiers whose acts a quarter of a century ago gave this Dominion nationhood among the peoples of the world. “Soldiers of France and the King— Before us lies an adventure unprecedented in modern war. Together with our comrades of the Fleet, we are about to force a landing upon an open beach in face of positions vaunted by our enemy as impregnable. The landing will be made by the help of God and the Navy. . . .” This is an extract from the Order of General Sir lan Hamilton to tho Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on April 23, 1915. It was the order preceding the Gallipoli landing, when the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, in company with English units, main among them the famous 29th Division, gained a foothold oil enemy country oil April 25, 1915.

To-day thoughts pass to another landing—i.u Norway- —being consummated “With the- help of God and the Navy.” Anzac Day will be of an even more sacred nature tlian in other years, for the present war lias cast a sympathetic shadow oil all memories of the great conflict of 1914-18. all the more so because of the national personnel of the main adversaries then and now.

Simple references in quiet homage to the heroes of Anzao were paid in several of the Palmerston North schools to-day. Others will assemble for brief periods to-morrow morning. At 9 a.m. to-morrow a. brief service will be held at the Cenotaph in the Square, Rev. J. Hubbard being the speaker, and at 2.45 p.m. the main service will take place at the Showgrounds, the scene of the Maori Battalion Camp, Rev. Gardner Miller, of Christchurch, being the speaker. Returned soldiers and sailors will parade as usual.