SONS OF CYPRUS ISLAND COME TO BRITAIN'S AID

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23565, 27 January 1940, Page 1 (Supplement)

SONS OF CYPRUS ISLAND COME TO BRITAIN'S AID

WEEK or so ago the cable pages of New Zealand's daily papers carried one of the most interesting items published since the beginning of the war. There was nothing very striking or romantic about the message; it merely announced that the first colonial troops, a contingent from Cyprus, had arrived in France, this being the - first occasion on which soldiers from Cyprus and Britain had been associated.

Once again, men have set out from a little-known corner of the Empire to serve, perhaps to. die, for. a King they have never* seen. Men .have done that before. But never .before; has there been quite the same romantic interest attaching to any such occasion as that which has brought British, French and Cypriotes together as comrades under arms in the world's greatest Crusade against the forces of tyranny and oppression. The Third Crusade

fn the year 1191. an English King, Richard Coeur de Lion, set out as leader of the Third Crusade, to drive the Turks from the Holy Land. He set sail from the island of Sicily. In another vessel sailed his betrothed. Princess Berengaria, daughter of th* King of Navarre. Accompanying them was a great fleet of ships and galleys. A fierce storm arose; the ships were separated, and when Richard, who had taken refuge in the harbour of Crete, gathered his convoy together, it was found that the galley # in which Berengaria and her sister had sailed was missing. After a frantic search, the galley was finally sighted off the isle of Cyprus. Speeding to the assistance of his betrothed. Richard discovered that the Lord of Cyprus, one Isaac Comnenus, had been so lacking in chivalry and courtesy as to deny the beautiful Berengaria • entrance to the harbour of Famagusta. Lion-heart promptly avenged the insult. He landed with his men, drove the unchivalrous Isaac right across the island to Limasol, the ancient capital, laid siege to the .city and took it. Then the wedding bells sounded, and "Rich'ard and Berengaria were.married in "Limasol amid scenes of g'relit magnificence and rejoicing. Thus England and France wore united in the dawn of English history on the beautiful island of Cyprus, where, over a thousand years before, the great Apostle Paul had paused awhile in the course of his journeyings around the shores of Asia Minor. History Recalled Ope crisp, clear morning in spring, our cruise ship,, the Lctitia, sister ship to the ill-fated Athenia, sailed down to Cyprus from the Syrian port .of Alexandretta. When I went 1 on deck, the high peaks and wooded hills of Cyprus were standing up dark and clear against the pale sky. Soon after breakfast we drew in to the port.of Famagusta and dropped anchor, possibly somewhere about the same spot as Berengaria's galley camo to rest over seven hundred years bofore. History lived again in the wonderful hours that followed. Days of strife, of glory, and liorror. unspeak-

Memories of Crusading, Days

By ELSIE K. MORTON

able, were recalled in our hours of wandering through the old Crusading cities of Famagusta and Nicosia, the capital since the fall of Limasol on that fateful day in 1191. I wandered round the great, sunfilled square outside the ancient Cathedral of St. Nicholas, now a mosque, and thought of the heroic Menetian commander, Marco Bragadino. who was tortured there in the open square by the Turks in a manner too hideous for description. Not far away, in the waters off Paphos. four thousand years ago, Aphrodite .rose from the sea Phoenician. Greek, Roman, Crusader,' Turk, Genoese. Venetian—all , fought through the centuries for the gem of the Levant. y\'liich passed under British protection in 18.78, and finally bbcanie a British Crown .Colony- in f ,1914, in consequence of the, entry of Turkey into the Great War on the side of the Central Powers. Still Surrounded by Walls

The 1 town of Famagusta is still surrounded by strongly built walls, 50 feet high; over 20 feet thick, built by the Venetians-in 1550 to withstand the oncoming rush of the Turkish hordes.' What a rich legacy of beautiful names has come down through the ages in memory of those great families that once ruled Cyprus, St. Hilarion, Bidfavento, and Kantara, the fairylike castles built by the de Lusignans, that still cling in picturesque ruin to the lofty crags of the Kyrenia range; Bella Paise Abbey, one of ( the loveliest of all the Latin Churches of the East; Larnaka, Limasol, and Nicosia. . . a faint echo of the old Crusading

trumpets surely sounds again in the music of their names! There was a lovely feeling of summer in the air; groat masses of silvery cloud sailed across a blue skv, and purple shadows swept across the wooded hills in the distance. The crisp, clear air had iri-.it a certain quality that brought a sudden pang of nostalgia. It seemed as though we had left the brown, driedtip lands of the East far behind, and were speeding down a Waikato road in early summer, with larks singing, and white sheep dotting the green hillsides. Women With Shovels We turned a corner; the road was up, and a group of workers paused to watch us pass. A couple of Cvpriot women in dull, shapeless robes rested on their shovels; several others, with brown, withered faces, looked up from their work of cracking u pile of stones with hammers and placing them laboriously by hand on the road! My thoughts turned a sudden somersault — 1 was back in the East again ' Nicosia was drenched in sunshine. Silver-workers, orange-sellers, postcard and sweets vendors crowded round as we stepped from our cars. We took refuge from them in the vast silence and cool ; jsemi-darkness.-of the great seventeenth-century cathedral of the Greek Orthodox Church. . . What a place! : The high domed .roof was painted with gleaming frescoes of the 'finding of the body of Si. Barnabas, fellow missionary of Paul. . . There Was hardly an inch of wall or ceiling that w.'is hot adorned with paintings of silver-haloed saints, golden plaster carvings and plaques, ikons, hanging filagree lamps and rich draperies. And standing proudly in a corner near the high pulpit was an old English grandfather clock!

The golden age of Cyprus has passed, but in her sons still lives the spirit of the Crusaders. . . On the battlefields ol France, they will once again find kinship with Coeur do Lion and Berengaria. . .