THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1929. THE WAR MEMORIAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20424, 28 November 1929, Page 10

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1929. THE WAR MEMORIAL.

With befitting ceremony, Auckland to-day enters into possession of a treasured heritage of the Great War. In a sense, it is a gift from the people of the province, a symbolic acknowledgment of gratitude to those who bore the brunt of the crucial struggle, and particularly to those who laid down their lives in the terribly exacting years. But to think of the War Memorial Museum and its Cenotaph set in a court of honour as so given, and to seek no further for what has brought them into being, is to miss the full truth. They are such a gift, and to contemplate them thus may well arouse a deep feeling of satisfaction in the noble form the gift has taken. Yet they are even more truly a bequest. Inspiring the whole project, in so far as it has been undertaken with faithful regard to the promptingpurpose, has been the spirit of ti.ose commemorated. But for them, the city and province would have had no such focus of national thought and embodiment of sacred memory and hope. Back of all the giving that has built this splendid tribute to them is the gift they gave—the gift of themselves. To speak of it as an expression of gratitude to them is to own that the impulse to erect this memorial came from them —not of their conscious and deliberate intent, but from, them none the less. Their survivors, all whom their service has blessed and their sacrifice enriched, have planned and wrought that this memorial might be built; yet sober truth, not fanciful imagination, is in the conviction that their trenching tools dug its foundations and their hands upreared and bedecked it. We may lightly think that we have conceived and created it. Not so ;it sprang from their hearts, and they have dowered us with it. We garner to-day in our civic storehouse an aftermath of the harvest they sowed, reaping splendour and sanctity from the ungrudged seed they scattered broadcast in the earth. To them, because it is in memory of them, we have raised what will long be our pride as a people. From them, in reality, we receive it, and will treasure it the more deeply on that account.

Acknowledging this, the people of this city and province may view with deep content whaif has been achieved. Small the achievement may seem when put beside the service commemorated, but it is good to think that the acknowledgment is not unworthy. A majestic crest on the skyline of the city makes fit pedestal for this permanent memorial. Generations following will be glad to find' it so uplifted ; and year by year, asi thousands flock about it on great days of remembrance, there will be ardent approval of the choice. The museum itself, possessed of a dignity and beauty inspired by a renowned achievement in historic architecture —the Parthenon of Athens—is impressively characterised. Simple in its contours, the broad horizontal lines suggesting strength and solidity rather than slender or fanciful adornment, the building makes an impressively direct appeal to eye and heart. Boldly white columns and walls, thrown up into clear relief by deep, sharp, regular shadows between the pillars and along the windowed facade, give a sense of unaffected dignity. No bizarre embellishments, no wantoning trifles, offend; all is in keeping with the symbolic purpose of the structure. It is so with the inscriptions carved in the pediment above the colonnade and in the lintel of the entrance. They are veritable stones of renown won from ancient quarries of strong thought. Within, the building voices the selfsame appeal. It will be impossible, save for the very young and the very careless, for any to go through the building, even if bent on merely curious or scientific quest, without reverent recall of great deeds greatly done and of that manifold devotion to plain duty which redeemed for evermore from grim horror the multiplied days of conflict.

Best of all, the spacious court of honour, and midway in it the stone Cenotaph, give the memorial its palpable fitness; and when there is added the Roll of Honour within the building, nothing will be lacking to make the achievement adequate. That 801 l of Honour is essential. Without it, the memorial would have been too impersonal to satisfy. What

is it that is commemorated 1 Not the pouring out of material treasure, but the selfless lavishing of the wealth of human life by its possessors. Had the gift been merely material, it could have been adequately acknowledged in a building. It was much more than that. Even the inscriptions and the Cenotaph are not enough. What was given was not life in the mass, but individual life. That made the gift great. The devotion, the endurance, the sacrifice, were personal; the death suffered was as personal as the answer given to the call for enrolment. Hence the need to inscribe name on name of thoso who made for us the living wall night and day what time civilisation was fighting for its life. With deep thankfulness for all that is commemorated, the city takes into its keeping this solemn memorial, looking not only back to the service honoured but forward also to the inspiration that the cherished memory may yet give.