Anzac Day

Upper Hutt Weekly Review, Volume I, Issue 19, 24 April 1936, Page 1

Anzac Day

_ In November, 1920, the N.Z. Parliament passed an Act in which the following" words appear—"ln commemoration of the part taken by New Zealand troops in the Great War and in memory of those who gave their lives for the Empire, the 25th April in each year (being the anniversary of the first landing of English, Australian and New Zealand troops on Gallipoli) shall be known as Anzac Day and shall be observed throughout New Zealand as a Public Holiday." For fifteen years this holiday has been observed with the utmost solemnity, to-mor-row is its sixteenth anniversary. The Act gives to the people of New Zealand the opportunity of expressing, as a Nation, the undying pride and gratitude felt by all; pride in the courage and wonderful achievements of the men who faced so much, gratitude for all the sacrifices they made; for all the hardships they endured. It sets aside a few hours each year, freed from the rush and pressure of ordinary, everyday life, in which each individual may meditate upon those years of anguish and unite in rendering- appropriate tribute and respect to the memory of the one hundred and ten thousand men who answered the call to arms. Of that one hundred and ten thousand men, no less than seventeen thousand sleep where they fell. It is around the memory of these last that most of the ceremonial of Anzac Day gathers. It is mete that it should. Remembrance is the only real tribute we can pay to them. We may erect pillars and columns and cenotaphs and memorials and leave our hearts as cold as the marble and bronze and stone. Herein lies the beauty of the sentiment which prompted the "Anzac Day Act," with the observances it prefigured—it commits to living lips, from generation to generation, the task of perpetuating the

memory of these valiant men; it calls to orators, year after year, to keep alive the story of their brave deeds; it asks living men and women to lay aside their work and their pleasures for one brief day each passing year, that they may soberly remember those who, for them, cast away everything they possessed. But let it not be forgotten that Anzac Day commemorates the living (sick and strong), as well as the dead, for—"These lent the life their martyr-brothers gave." All marched away imbued with the one spirit. The glorious morning of their manhood with all its hope and unfulfilled ambition; health and strength; the sweet companionship of loved ones ; home, comfort, possessions ; all these precious things they placed upon the altar of sacrifice before they marched away. The. cheers which greeted the ears of those who returned to these shores from that "great adventure" have died away, but the echo must still ring amongst the hills of the country for which they fought. Not all of those who returned were able to take up again the things which they had laid down. Sixty thousand suffered from wounds or other terrible disabilities. Of these, twenty years later, many are still in hospital. To strew flowers on the graves and at the foot of the memorials erected to the fallen is a graceful symbol of remembrance, but the hands that bear them thither would feel warm in the grasp of those who live.