CONSECRATION OF MENIN GATE

Northern Advocate, 17 September 1927, Page 14

CONSECRATION OF MENIN GATE

®feUTE TO HEROIC DEAD OF VPRES SALIENT • ! v ■ ■

EDITORIAL PRAISE TO EMPIRE TROOPS BY NEW YORK “TIMES.”

Praise for the heroic i sacrifices of - Empire troops at Ypres is contained in an editorial by the “New York *Ti}nesf” commenting on the recent dedi‘ca&bn,6f’the’Henin Gatememorial. ■ The “Times” comments as follows; /'Nearly as-many men of the British passed over the Menin Road to r the Ypres salient not-only-never to . ' return but ever to lie there without a {|rave, “unknelled, uncoffined, and un--1 Shown,” as the United States lost by ‘ ' -death in th'e World War. In the panels f . “Menin Gate,” dedicated at Ypres ' ' ;as the ‘ 1 Empire’s greatest memorial,” t '■ are written under Kipling’s inscrip- ( t tiou the names of fifty-six thousand ! '■ men “to whom the fortunes of war V denied the known and honoured burial • r .given to their comrades in death.” If ( to these were added the names of . those who travelled that same road " ’ dfiring the four years but found known ■ f bprial they would fill four times as mapy panels and multiply by four the -fitoial number of American dead. v ■ • :• ’ ■ ■ i ' J i? - TERRIBLE CONDITIONS. k*: .• ■■■ V ... ■ v Wliat happened in those fields of Flanders -behind that monument of glory the world should never forget, for its’own sake as well as'for the sake of those who perished, there, es-, r|, specially in the last battle of. Ypres, from July 31, 1917, to -November .4, when “a sudden advance of the Ist '^-fiDi-vision-a;nd = the Canadian 2nd Division” captured Passchendaele and brought the battle to a close by vie.tory. “All the agonies of war,” said Sir Philip Gibbs, “ which I have at- • tempted to" describe were piled up in • those fields of Flanders.” Nothing ' was “bussing in the list of war’s abominations.” Nor was anything missing'Ujl> the lint of human valour. ■ Nothings sl&t had been written, said Sir Phiifpj/. Ava's more than * ‘ a pale image’the. aAvfulness. of the thing itself, ■ i There were month? of battle in which otir ('(British.) men advanced through ' slilne into under ‘ flic flash of machine gun bullets, shrapnel and high' explosives, Avet to the skin, chilled to the bone, plastered up to the eyes in mud, with a dreadful Avay back for walking wounded, and but little chance for wounded Avho could not walk. The losses in many of these battles amounted almost to annihilation to many battalions; and Avhole division* lost as much as 50 per cent. - of their strength after a- few days’ action. , . . Napoleon said “that no body of men could lose more than 25 per cent, of their fighting strength in an . action without being broken in spirit. Our men lost double that and. more than double that, but kept their courage, though in some eases they lost their hope. -AWFUL CASUALTIES. ■. A Lancashire division lost 3540 men in casualties out of 1049. A Highland brigade, lost 87 officers and 2000 men during -these months. The Irish divisions had' as brave a record. The / Eighth Dublins were all but annihilated in' holding the line. On the night be- - fore battle hundreds Avere gassed, but their .comrades attacked and lost over 2000 more and 102 officers. The Ninth Ihiblins lost ,3» officers out of 17 and 66 per cent, of the men. But the line i' was held. ' ■ - THE WORLD’S ,DEBT. -Pericles said over the Athenian dead 'that-they had won the most honourable | sepulchres, not that-in which--they ■ried but that in which their ujrvived. Even those AA 7 ho were £■burial want not their hearse, fo,theft “a tomb’s the uni-

A 7 orse,” and we of all the universe have reason to stand with gratitude before that gate of honour to those who perished behind it. But for their endurance and that of their comrades, living and dead, it would be not a memorial of their sacrifice but a monument to their defeat —a gate opening to the sea and to our own coasts. And yet AA'e continue to speak of their debt to us—their debt would haA r e put us and all the Avorkl in eternal debt to them. Those who lie in Flanders, in graves marked or unmarked, would wish to have written on those vast panels what Plato wrote for the Eretrian soldiers AA r ho died as exiles in Persia — changing only the place-names: “We Avho left the booming surge of the ocean lie here in the plain of Flanders; fare thou Avell, renowned England, mother country of us all; fareAvell London, nigh to all Avithin the British Isles; fareAvell, -dear sea,” But hastening to “set a crown of freedom” on the Avorlcl,, they “lie possessed. Of praise that grows not old.’,’ The “dear sea” A\ 7 as not reached by those in whoso path they stood valiantly in life and piled their, bodies in death as a barrier.