THE CITY COUNCIL AND SENTIMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22808, 18 February 1936, Page 11

THE CITY COUNCIL AND SENTIMENT

TO THE EDITOB

Slit, —I have read with a considerable amount of amusement the decision of the Dunedin City Council regarding the Queeti's Gardens—that peaceful spot containing a few obsolete cannon and the Cenotaph. I have also noted that indifference with which Anzac Day as a day of national mourning is viewed. As one who served from the landing at Gaba Tepe to the end at Morval Forest, may I be permitted a little space in your columns? Do the powers that be in Dunedin really believe that the youth of the city will ever be influenced towards militarism by the sight of such peaceful heaps of cumbersome metals, while all Dunedin welcomes each successive warship entering her harbour, with all the pomp and ceremony it can command? Has any British subject unfortunate enough to have been in distress at sea or in some hostile port heard anything but "Thank God we have a navy" when events that made strong men weak regain confidence with a report of " the navy has heard our calling? " .No, those antiquated relics only serve to remind us of the rapid advances in the industrial world.

And, concerning the Cenotaph and what it stands for in the eyes of a returned soldier on Anzac Day, how many know that the first anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli was commemorated in 1916 by the Australian troops in Egypt as a day of mourning for fallen comrades? Yet men who knew not, and know not, that spirit of comradeship describe the sentiments, which prompt our reverence at the Cenotaph and its surroundings and our regard for Anzac Day as "cant, hypocrisy, and humbug." And why should Anzac Day, the day given us by special legislation to be observed as though a Sunday, be profaned and desecrated by the exhibition of pictures, pictures which are run daily, even twice daily, for five and six days a week, all for private gain? Yet these pictures often show the latest devices for killing and maiming—aeroplanes, tanks, battleships, submarines, guns. What of them? What a paradox! Old obsolete weapons paraded before the public eye as a menace to youth, and a desecration of Anzac Day by modern pictures.

, I presume that the legislation which prohibits the Chinaman from gardening on a Sunday and has landed before the court offenders who worked on previous Anzac Days will be used against picture theatre workers and their proprietors who similarly offend, and also, that Labour Councils will everywhere see that double pay is made to those picture theatre employees. A sorry country it is that cannot function without pictures on six days a week and so defeat the aims of the masses for a five-day working week. If the masses really believe we have too many holidays, and if Anzac Day is one of them, I suggest Labour Day as another that might be discarded. It seems to me that the only hurt which these things cause is the hurt to the consciences of those who, being able-bodied and young men, avoided or intend to avoid obligations to their fellow man. To these the mere mention of guns or Anzac Day or the Cenotaph must prompt nothing but superficial chatter and false sentimentality,—l am, etc., 1914-18. Kaitangata, February 15.