No Large Armistice Day Services

Manawatu Times, Volume 65, Issue 270, 2 November 1940, Page 7

No Large Armistice Day Services

POPPIES TO BE SOLD (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, Oct. 31. His Majesty the King has decided that the usual Armistice Day services at the Ceftotaph shall not be held this year, and the Government feels that in the present circumstances it would be preferable that other large services which are customarily held throughout the country should not be held. In view of the risk of confusion with air-raid warning signals, it will not be possble to signal the two-minute silence as in previous years. November 11 will, however, be observed as Poppy Day as hitherto, and the British Legion is making the usual arrangements for the sale of poppies in aid of Earl Haig’s Fund. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Cosmo Lang, has issued the following announcement “The Government has announced that in the present circumstances Armistice Day cannot be observed in the once customary manner. While this is inevitable, there will be a general desire that Armistice Day should not pass without the associations which so long have surrounded it. Therefore it is proposed, with the approval of his Majesty, that Sunday, November 10, should be observed in our various places cf worship and in our hearts and homes as a day of remembrance and dedication. “We shall still remember those who fought and died fer the country’s cause in the last war, and with them now those who already in .the present war have given their lives. “We shall dedicate ourselves to the task of finishing, if it may be, the work which the men of 1914-18 sought to do, and of doing and giving our utmost to win the victory of freedom, justice and peace. We shall dedicate our minds and wills even now to the task which will await us when this war is over—the task of bringing in a new and better order of our common life, both national and international, on the basis of Christian faith and loyalty to the Kingdom of God. Truly by the call of this great time, the most fateful in our history, to each one of us a bond is given that he should henceforth b« a dedicated spirit”