The Sun SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1919. PICTURESQUE AND PROFITABLE.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VI, Issue 1736, 6 September 1919, Page 8

The Sun SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1919. PICTURESQUE AND PROFITABLE.

It is not necessary to be a sentimentalist to feel an unwonted glow over the events of this week. Viewed from any angle at all the whole occasion has been historic. It is not the first time that our city has been filled by men in blue, but it is the only occasion on which those men have come straight from battle and a shell-scarred ship. It is the first opportunity Canterbury has ever had of making the acquaintance of a supremely great sailor. Once only in the past has a man so high in the councils of Empire set foot in New Zealand at all, and that, as we have once already remarked, was before, and not after, the tasks that were to be the crowning glory of his career. Never before has the Navy been represented in every branch, or revealed to this remote community in its infinite capacity and variety. And we think we are entitled to say that Christchurch has appreciated the situation. But for an unfortunate little hitch on Monday night, which was speedily rectified and atoned

for, the city has risen like one man to honour its far-off defenders. It is right, in this connection, to acknowledge the contagious enthusiasm of the Mayor. Cities, like armies, must have a lead, and our Chief Magistrate, has never faltered. Much of the' heartiness of which our visitors have made most generous acknowledgment has beeh ihe direct result of his Worship's unaffected zeal. And if the occasion has been made genuinely, and not merely officially, happy by the great tact and courtesy of the quarter-deck, the finishing touch has been the marked good conduct of the petty officers and men. It is no use saying one thing and meaning another, and the sailors will not be offended if we so frankly regard their conduct as unusual. What we' expected does not matter, but it was certainly not the modesty and restraint of men whose lives have been lived in gentler places. And for a final setoff, nothing could have been more appropriate than the tribute ' this morning to, and by, the returned soldiers. We have referred already to the novelty of a visit by men straight from Jutland, Ostend and Zeebrugge —not to mention all those other nonspectacular occasions of which Viscount Jellicoe permitted us a brief glimpse the other night. But when before did the streets of Christchurch echo to the tramp of soldiers and sailors marching side by side? When again shall we see anything so fine as the men of Anzac and Messines, Passchendaele, Romani and Gaza marching side by side with the men who permitted it all to start a monument in-memory of their united dead? It has been a memorable week throughout—neither too formal nor too inanely frivolous, arid it ends, we think, in a fashion that must have moved everybody. For the few brief days that remain it is unnecessary, we are sure, to bespeak a continuance of Canterbury's proudly-bestowed hospitality.