Anzac Day Service.

Northland Age, Volume 2, Issue 25, 24 March 1933, Page 1

Anzac Day Service.

Sir,—The public should understand, I think, the master-stroke accomplished by the Town Board in the way of shirking its responsibilities. It is the custom through New Zealand to hold a Commemoration Servide on Anzac Day, and everywhere, so far as I know, the service is under the control of the local authority. Until last year the local authority here controlled the service but then the Board decided to wash its hands of the matter. One can only come to the conclusion in view of the facts, that personal and not public reasons dictate the policy of the Board. This week when the matter came up for consideration again it was again decided to have nothing to do with the matter in spite of the fact that three out of fiv e members of the Board favoured the Board doing the honourable and proper thing. But Mr. Mayhill was away on his holiday and though he wrote a letter giving his views, those views were ignored and a personal view was pushed through on the Chairman’s casting vote. Two men in other words, carried their point against three.

But my point is that a principle is here involved. The Town Board has left the matter to the Churches, but this has nothing to do with the Churches in an official sense. The Anzac Service is a local body matter: a matter for the whole community and the local body representing the whole community. The Churches operating in Kaitaia represent only a section of the community. After all, the Churches were not the only bodies represented at the war. Ic was a national thing and all classes and creeds and no-creeds-at-all took part. The only true representative body in Kaitaia is the Town Board. The Churches are representative of a section. And the Anzac Service will be robbed of its fine representative spirit if a couple of churches combine for it or hold separate services. I should like to ask Mr. Taaffe, on whose casting vote the Town Board evaded its responsiblity: Who asked the Town Board to back out of the Anzac Service and leave it to the Churches? What influential deputation of citizens asked them to take no part in a service that many men and women deeply appreciate? What was the real cause of his forcing his opinion and the opinion of one other member upon the Town Board against the opinions of three other members, not to speak of the silence-gives-consent opinion of the electors? Will Mr. Taaffe be honest enough to give the real causes in the next issue of the “Age ?”. As far as I am aware, Mr. Taaffe has not been elevated to the rank of Dictator of our affairs and the Hitler touch is not what we might expect in a Democratic Community. I would suggest that if Mr. Taaffe objects to officiate at the commemoration service on Anzac Day that he could quite easily arrange to be represented by a member of the Board. If this letter is a personal one, I am sorry. But the facts of the case make it impossible that it should be otherwise. Yours, etc., D. M. MARTIN