THE WAR MEMORIAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20425, 29 November 1929, Page 15

THE WAR MEMORIAL.

MUSEUM AND CENOTAPH.

GREAT OPENING CEREMONY.

TAGEANT IN THE DOMAIN.

MOST INSPIRING RITUAL.

HONOURING WAR HEROES

The opening of Auckland's War Memorial Museum, the noblest edifice in tho province, and the consecration of the Cenotaph,/ which stands guard upon a paved court before it, wero performed with impressive ceremony yesterday. Tho fact that it lias taken many years to consummate' the great work and perfect a monument befitting the heroes to whose memory it is dedicated cast a halo of romance about the ceremony. 5 "This is worth all the waiting," people said. "It is not hastily conceived or shoddilv built. It. is a beautiful thing, upon which infinite care and pains have been bestowed to make it perpetually worthy of its purpose."

Under an awning at the base of the colonnade of the Wa<* Memorial Museum were gathered the military, naval, ecclesiastic and,civil representatives, in whose hands the joint ceremonial was entrusted. The Governor-General, Sir Charles Fergusson, in the uniform of a general, 'picturesquely typified that army in whose service New Zealand's soldiers fought and died. As the direct representative of the King, he conferred upon the act "f dedication the cognisance of the lmperi-il State, joining Auckland's homage with that 'of all tho Empire's subjects.

The Fluttering of the Flags. Not until the Primate, Archbishop Averill, and the moderator of the Auckland Presbytery, the Rev. W. D. Morri-son-Sutherland, advanced to perform the act of consecration, was the cenotaph in the Court of Honour approached by a living being. A guard of honour, comprising a naval detachment from H.M.S. Philomel and the King's College cadets, was drawn up some distance from the base of the mbnument, but otherwise it remained remote and apart, silent save for the flapping of the flags fastened to tho standards on two sides. In the light breeze they twisted and curled about the corners of the great pedestal as though they would embrace it entirely in their folds. '

In the bright sunshine the scene would have done justice to a painter's palette. Flags fluttered from the roof eg the museum and from the four corners of the spacious Courts of Honour, the robes of the ecclesiastics added a splash of colour to the bifte of the Cenotaph, and in the distance the blue waters of the Waitemata sparkled through the vernal green of the trees.

The column of white stone standing sentinel before the majestic colonnade formed (he sacred pivot for all thoughts. To the thousands who stood bareheaded that austere and symmetrical pillar, kit hod in afternoon sunshine following a morning of rain, might have been a beacon of light guiding the footsteps of men to a haven of rest and solitude. Hound its wreath-surmounted crest were gathered ' the spirits of all the dead heroes —tHe camp of an invisible and mighty army.

The Roll of Drums. The first episode to stir the huge crowd v.as the consecration by the Primate, dedicating tiie Cenotaph and separating it from "all common and profane uses." There were'few who did not experience emotion'3s he prayed that "this Cenotaph Le a link between the dead and the living and a solemn appeal to present and future to remember the past and give honour to whom honour is due." Then came the second thrill —tho roll of drums issuing from the portals of the memorial building.- Tho roll began with a crash, swelled and .died away on the wind, and then, from the roof of the building, floated the note of bugles. Memories! How they crowded in upon the scene! That bugle note summoned forth the'fallen from their graves over the sea and sent them marching once again in battalions across the sky. They followed tho cloud wreaths, which drifted idly from west to east, from the sunset to the dawn, hailing the memory backward to a time now in history when ,the fields and deserts of the earth were drenched / in blood and only the brave were great. Another Time, Another Place. Two years ago a squad of Highland pipers thrilled an immense assemblage in very similar circumstances. It was tho unveiling of the Menin Gate memorial at Ypr.es and when the flags concealing the dedicatory inscription in the arch had fallen the pipers, posted high up 011 the ramparts, played the haunting Scottish lament, "Flowers of the Forest." Something of the same unforgettable effect was achieved by yesterday's buglers on the roof of the memorial building. The notes floated majestically down, to bo carried by the wind over the tree tops. The final sad strains of "The Last, Post" echoed mournfully away and tho assHibly, sang Kipling's "Recessional"— "Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, lest; we forget, lest we forget." And an though to help the memory a cloud passed momentarily over the sun and threw a shadow over a patch of ground, not 50 paces from the Cenotaph, where workmen had been levelling the broken slope to make a grass plot. Drenched by rain during the night, the clay had been turned into a quagmire, the colour of Flanders mud, menaced from the eastern side by a gun relic. Standing behind that gun so, that all was blotted out but that rain-soaked churned patch of ground one might have imagined oneself on theJSommfl in 1916. The analogy was strikingly realistic.. Graven Images of Heroes. Above the heads of the people the graven images of the country's heroes looked down from their stone frieze. As (he Governor-General said, every type of the nation's fighting man was there represented going about his allotted task. No man seemed to have been omitted. Every inch of that colossal entablature was ail impersonal memorial to some hero, and all through'yesterday's ceremony the presence of those grim determined profiles could be felt as well as seen. They wsre the men of whom His Excellency spoke, "who always had the fear of dishonour before their eves." The, final act of all was the handing over of the Cenotaph to the Mayor arid citizens of Auckland, and the Memorial Museum to the Auckland Institute and 'Museum. With the performance of that task His Excellency brought to an end a ceremony that marked the completion of manv years' work and the solemn redemption' of a debt to which every man and woman in the Auckland Province was a partyKnocking upon the door of the building His, Excellency declared it officially open and entering, was _ followed by a great portion of the multitude. But the Cenotaph smII stood remote and imperturbable. and the flags kept up their ceaseless fluttering. They might have been saving to each of those who in the years oMhe war suffered loss: "He is not missing; ho is here."