OUTBREAK OF GREAT WAR

Taranaki Daily News, 6 August 1934, Page 5

OUTBREAK OF GREAT WAR

TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY NO CELEBRATION AT LONDON WIDOWS VISIT WAR GRAVES BROADCAST PROGRAMME British Wireless. Rugby, Aug. 3. To-morrow is the 20th anniversary of the outbreak of war between Britain and Germany. There will be no formal commemoration in London, as the general feeling is that the day needs no underlining. The British Legion ex-servicemen will, however, take part in a brief ceremony at the cenotaph, when the acting-High Commissioner for Canada will lay a wreath as a tribute from the Canadian corps to their British comrades, and a legion wreath will be laid as a tribute to Canadians who gave their lives during the war. A party of 500, mostly widows and mothers, will leave England to-morrow to visit graves to France and Flanders for the annual ceremony of “scattering ashes,” which takes place at the huge Tynecot cemetery, Ypres salient, on Sunday. The ashes will be those of small wooden crosses placed on Armistice Day to the Field of Remembrance by Westminster Abbey.

To-morrow night the national broadcasting programme will contain items entitled, “Twenty Years Ago.” The main course of events preceding the outbreak of the Great War will be recalled and an attempt will be made to catch the atmosphere of those tragic days. The broadcast has been compiled from original documents by Professor Temperley, joint editor of official British documents dealing with that period. Mr. Winston Churchill, writing to the Daily Mail, recalling that 20 years have, passed since the catastrophe broke upon the- world, says: “We have travelled a sorry road since then. The most complete victory ever gained left the victors more anxious and alarmed and, perhaps, to greater danger than before the war to end war. Luckily everyone still feels poor and Germany has not yet finished rearming. We knew where we were in 1914, but where are we now?”