THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1923. ARMISTICE DAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18553, 10 November 1923, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1923. ARMISTICE DAY.

We call it Armistice Day, the eleventh day of the eleventh month of our calendar year, but in reality it is commemorative of peace—a peace for which the -whole world had longed with anguish, a peace won at unspeakable cost. For weary years, whose brevity in the retrospect should not make us forget their slow-dragging days and weeks and months as we lived through them, there was sacrifice and endurance. Man's inhumanity to man made countless thousands mourn. Anxiety was tense and hope was dogged by cruel fears. Our loved ones, for us and others, stood in the breach. Some of them went never to return. Some came again, but only as the shadows of themselves, so worn and broken were they. Some happily escaped disaster, save for the hidden wounds their spirits bore from the strife. .All of them passed through the fiery test, our only joy the courage that led them thither and kept them stalwart. The story of their struggle is become a household word now better memorial than any set in masonry or traced on marble. It was a grim ordeal, and but for what it meant we might well wish it forgotten. Then, after days of wonder when it would all end, the glad tidings of the armistice came. On the battle front the guns were silent. No longer was the air thrashed by the fighting planes. The very sea took on an unwonted quiet. Relieved from the strair of ceaseless watch and ward, our men found a breathing space and snatched ease at last. The news of their relief flashed all across the world, and soon they and we knew that the cessation of hostilities was the formal prelude of peace. To some it seemed too good to be true. To others it brought harrowing regret that it had not come sooner. To all it signalised the dawn of a new era; the troubled night was past, and the sunlight born anew. It was a grey dawn, for there was much stern work to do ere the world was set to rights; but the morning had come, and for a little that was boon enough to satisfy the most hungry soul. Inevitably, as the commemorative date approaches, we live again those moments when a restored tranquility came to the world, and give them memorial. We keep the anniversary as one of joy and pain, of solemn thanksgiving and proud sorrow. It is our Empire's day of honour to the valiant dead, a national war memorial. Here, in our islands of the south, far from the Homeland, we have our Anzac Day as the occasion when the daring and sacrifice of our own sons are reverently, recalled. But, in common with all the lands of our vast domain in the seas, we share the brief interval of sacred silence that girdles the world as there comes on Armistice Day the hour before the noon. This memorial has become one of the bonds of British brotherhood, and we use it bo.. To-morrow, for that interval, at the invitation of our beloved King, the wheels of life will stand still. Whatever be the occupation of the moment, we shall give place to recollection of the war and its meaning, and especially hold in our thought for a space those of our own kith and kin who went to death for us. "The great war" we call it. It was tragically great in extent. Swept into its maelstrom were practically all the nations of the earth. It levied unprecedented toll on human life and treasure. It made the whole world kin in a baptism of suffering. It was great in its issues. It began in a stupendous onslaught on the freedom of peoples, threatening to undo all that civilisation had laboriously accomplished through toilsome centuries to emancipate men from brutality and barbarism. If the foe had worked his will there were an end, for a while at least, to mankind's millennial dreams. No greater struggle had the ages seen indeed, none so great. But the war was great beyond measurement in- its heroisms. At home and abroad, by sea and land, courage and patience had unexampled test, and they failed not. We pay glad honour to all, women as well as men, who bore the cross of this modem Calvary. Particularly do we pay that honour to those who bore it all the way to death.

The chosen, method of our mem—the two minutes' silence—is beautiful in its simplicity and dignity. Never had royal proclamation better warrant than in this. It- comes from the eternal fitness of things. This commemoration cannot easily become conventional or merely studied. It may hold us all in a close fellowship, and yet leave us to ourselves. Every heart knows its own bitterness, and ' its own balm. In the secret places of

our own souls we may set up the shrines that are sacred to the memory of our own beloved, and there, none peering or hindering, v find sacramental comfort; and from that wondrous festive' of silence come forth with deepened sympathies for others' cares and regrets and joys. To-morrow the celebration of this holy quiet may Hose a little of its customary' benison through falling in the Sabbath hours. There will be no awakening contrast with the hurry and noise of week-day activities. Yet it may gain a little for some in the intensity with which in the place of public worship it may be observed. For everybody it should bring again a, salutary influence in a time that is overfull of tumult. We are dosing ourselves in the riot of loud-spoken and bustling medley that we miscall society. We have lost something of the art of communing with ourselves. In the touching memorial that recurs at the behest of His Majesty we may plumb depths not often guessed, and find a deeper meaning for all that goes to make up life.