THE WAR MEMORIAL.

Southland Times, Issue 19393, 6 November 1924, Page 4

THE WAR MEMORIAL.

While it is difficult to say much in reply to “Justice” whose letter on the subject of the War Memorial we publish this morning, there are one or two points on which it is necessary to correct him. He confesses that he is unable to grasp the “logic of the high ideals” characterising our reference to this matter —we thank him for the admission that our argument was for high ideals—and so on this score there is nothing to be said, because we feel that we made our position absolutely clear. But “Justice” is entirely wrong in suggesting that our plea for a memorial that does not restrict its scope to the names it bears was put forward in. defence of the “Committee of

Ten with their secretary,” because, so far as we are concerned there is nothing to “defend.” Our correspondent has as little right to that suggestion as he has to infer that the Committee’s decision was dictated by laziness. The very term he uses—“a complete list”— at once shows the difficulties of the position and its dangers, because there is room for a great divergence of opinion as to what contitutes a complete list. The Returned Soldiers’ Association, which speaks for a large body of returned men, doubtless considered this aspect of the matter and decided to recommend a course which, while ennobling the memorial, eliminates all danger of names being overlooked or excluded on technical grounds. It is a better thing to so broaden the scope of the memorial that it embraces all Southlanders who gave their lives for the cause for which the Empire went to war, than to adopt limitations which might lead to the exclusion of the names of men who died as a direct result of war service long after the signing of the Versailles Treaty. Our correspondent might present his case fully by explaining what in his opinion is a “complete list,” and at what point he will draw the line which will exclude the names of men who served in the war and have since died. There are men in hospital to-day maimed and broken by war service, for whom Death has been brought nearer by the injuries inflicted by war, and it seems to us that if names are to be inscribed on the tablets of this memorial their title is indisputable. In spite of our correspondent’s sneering references, we think the Committee’s decision actually affords protection against injustice, and for this reason alone is to be applauded.