GALLIPOLI GRAVES.

Southland Times, Issue 18077, 2 May 1919, Page 4

GALLIPOLI GRAVES.

The cabled message relating to the agreement secured by Mr Massey in connection with Gallipoli will give the greatest satisfaction to the people of Australia and New Zealand. The battlefields are to be transferred in perpetuity to Britain and will be permanently maintained exclusively as a cemetery memorial to the brave dead. It is fitting that this exceptional recognition should be secured not only to those Colonials who died on'those historic shores, but to all those who took part in a military enterprise without parallel in the history of war. The story of that Landing cannot be too often recalled to memory or too vividly impressed on the rising generation. The Anzacs, civilians with a few months training in the art of war, were called upon to do something which from a purely military point of view was an impossibility. They were asked to take a position that was impregnable. There is no precedent in military history for the Gallipoli Landing, which may for all time occupy a unique place in the annals of war. Knowing that the flower of the Turkish army, officered by Germans and amply supported by artillery, was strongly entrenched on those rocky slopes, no military authority would have regarded the Landing as anything but an impossible dream. There was no means of reaching those Turks except with the bayonet and through a zone of fire in which it seemed impossible that any man could live. Yet on that memorable morning, four years ago, the untried men of Australia and New Zealand achieved the impossible. They displayed a degree of courage, pluck and determination that made the whole world marvel. Not only in the landing, but in the long months that followed of pestilence and hardship, they exhibited qualities that placed them in the forefront of the world’s fighting men. A feat of arms so glorious should be perpetuated in some special manner, and it is meet that those narrow battlefields should be set apart as a shrine where tribute may be paid to the dead and to the living.