LESSONS OF THE DAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19620, 26 April 1927, Page 15

LESSONS OF THE DAY.

INSPIRATION FOR YOUTH. SCHOOLCHILDREN'S SERVICE. FIRST GATHERING OF KIND." The lesson of Anzac was conveyed to a large gathering of schoolchildren in the Town Hall yesterday afternoon, when a commemorative service for the boys and girls of the secondary schools of the city, held for the first time, was an outstanding success., After the National Anthem had been sung, Mr. S. Austin Carr, president of the Returned Soldiers' Association, expressed the hope that the service would become a .regular part of tho Anzac Day observances. A hymn was sung, a lesson* read, and then young voices were lifted in prayer. Kipling's "Recessional" followed. Canon Percival James, addresing the gathering, said the service was held to •coep fresh in the,minds of the nation the memory of those men who. on that day some years before, had, by incredible valour, achieved the impossible. At a terrific cost of heroic lives the Australians. New Zealanders and Imperial troops had gained a foothold on the iinpregnablo peninsula of Gallipoli. Anzac Pay was a day of proud remembrance. Soon there would not be a boy or girl in tjie secondary schools who was born before the war. and it was the duty of those at school at present to see that remembrance was maintained, not mournfully, but with a certain spirit of joy. Tho soldier in 1914 and 1915 had not given up his work to "make the world safe for democracy"; he had answered the call of duty—"Your King and country need you." It was the grandest and most sublime motive possible. "And those men fought to make the world safe for you," Canon James continued. "They wished to spare the boya unborn from being flung into that-chemi-cal annihilation, that mechanical massacre that they went through. They died to make a better world and a better New Zealand. In their hearts, they had trust in the next generation, they had trust in you. There is only one way to fulfil that trust. The only way to make tho world better is to make bettor men and women to live in it. You boys and girls are to be tho better men and women of the next generation; you are to be the fruits of victory." Tho -"Anzac" spirit; the spirit that lay behind the observances of that day, was the spirit that prompted a man or women to make the world a little beter for somebody else to live in. After the service wreaths were laid on the cenotaph by pupils from all the secondary schools of the city. Drawn up before the monument was a guard of Honour from the Mount Albert Grammar School cadets, and through a lane in the crowd representatives from the schools marched, carrying wreaths. THE LAST CEREMONY. PILGRIMAGE AT WAIKUMETE. A touching ceremony took place at the Waikumete Cemetery yesterday afternoon, when wreaths were laid on the graves of ex-soldiers buried there. As the last of the wreaths from the cenotaph was laid by the Mayor, Mr. George Baildon, at the foot of the memorial, the Municipal Band played the National Anthem. There was a large gathering. The cadets of C Company, under Lieutenant W. H. Potter, surrounded the memorial as a guard of honour. "I feel that our brothers are not far away on an occasion like this," said the Rev. Angus McDonald, 0.8. E., the veteran of many wars, who gave the address. "I may be old-fash-ioned, but I think I am right, and if I am wrong it does not matter. 1 greet them across the valley of the shadow, and say to them,, 'Hail —and farewell!'" The Hallelujah Chorus was played before the benediction, given by Mr. McDonald.