GREAT WAR AREA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22209, 9 September 1935, Page 12

GREAT WAR AREA

THE SCENE TO-DAY VISITOR'S DESCRIPTION A number of ex-servicemen whose memories of Flanders and Northern France are still fresh listened with great interest to an account of a recent visit to the old war scenes which was given by Mr. D. M. Rae at the Auckland War Memorial Museum library yesterday afternoon. Mr. Rae searched out as many as possible of the old spots and landmarks that were so familiar to the New Zealanders in the days of the Great War, and he passed on his impressions in vivid and picturesque fashion. Speaking of Ypres, Mr. Rae said it had been tolerably well rebuilt, and the great cathedral magnificently so. The Cloth Hall had not yet been completed, but the people were doing their best to restore it, and they were still laboriously searching the ruins for any pieces of glass or masonry that might be used in the reconstruction. Mr. Rae described the war memorials he had seen, including the Menin Gate, commemorating 58,000 unidentified dead "known only to God." and the beautiful cemeteries such as the great one at Tyne Cot with its 12,000 graves, where English flowers bloom and English trees grow and English soldiers devote themselves with interest to the work of tending the plots. Sometimes in these war cemeteries there would bo found a stone bearing the inscription "In memory of an unknown German hero," and similar inscriptions to soldiers of the Allies might be found in the German cemeteries on the other side of the lino. In sonic places Mr. Rao found the traces of the conflict almost completely obliterated, but in others such massive objects as pillboxes were still features of the landscape. At one point he was interested to find that a mine crater which he had seen exploded had proved too big to ho filled in and was now a willow-circled lake, where the birds darted and the farmers came to draw water in the dry season.

Mr. Eae concluded his talk by showing a number of photographs of notable war memorials and a short cinematograph film he himself had taken when visiting the parts about Ypres, Armentieres and Messines.

Sir George Richardson, who presided, expressed the thanks of the gathering to Mr. Rae, and, in recalling the Great War cemeteries as ho had seen them, said that those who has thus given their lives were asking those who remained what they were doing to prevent such another catastrophe and to help their wives and children to make the world a better place.