THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Saturday, April 24, 1943. ANZAC DAY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25208, 24 April 1943, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Saturday, April 24, 1943. ANZAC DAY

The sombre associations of Anzac Day should impinge with a special significance on the minds of New Zealanders to-morrow. Across the span of nearly three decades the circumstances of the heroic and fateful adventure-in-arms that was the Gallipoli campaign will be recalled with a new urgency and a renewed sense of understanding. For what is past is, in a particular degree, being repeated in the present. Far to the west of that peninsula whence the name of Anzac emerged, where the Tunisian tip of Africa projects itself into the Mediterranean, a New Zealand division is again in the press of battle, and this peculiar juxtaposition of events and places will surely have recognition in to-mor-row’s commemoration. It is fitting that Anzac Day in this April should fall on a Sunday—so fitting, indeed, that a passing regret may be ex- s pressed that the day of observance was not appointed to be a Sunday from the outset. For with tho passage of time since the first Anzac Day there have been inevitable encroachments on its meaning, on the purpose for which it was set apart from other days in the year,. A correspondent in our columns this week pointed to one of these whfen he remarked critically on the fact that Anzac Day had become the subject of bargaining in certain awards of the Arbitration Court in which provision is made for workers’ holidays. ' The Returned Services’ Association has, as will be seen from a message in this issue, reminded the public of the protest it has made to the Government concerning this flagrant abuse of the occasion of the commemoration of an historical event of poignant interest and has recalled the evasiveness of the reply which it received from the Minister of Labour. Nothing in more obvious want of harmony with the spirit of Anzac observance could be imagined than this petty huckstering over a sacred anniversary, and no stronger argument could be produced for reconsideration, from the moral and legal standpoints, of the day’s status and implications. It must, in fact, appear to many that when this war is over a case may be made for the naming of a new day altogether, or at the least the establishment of a new form of observance, that will mark appropriately both the performance and the sacrifice of the soldiers from New Zealand in two world wars. In the light of what has happened since this war began, in the several combat areas where New Zealand and Australian men and women have again brought great honour to the lands that bred them, the Anz'ac observance has become almost anachronistic. It may be premature to talk of change while the fight against aggression is still to be won, but it need not be too early to think of it, in terms of a day of commemoration that will be all-embracing in its scope and wholly secure in the respect of the people.