THE GALLIPOLI PICTURES.

Waipa Post, Volume XVII, Issue 962, 1 July 1920, Page 4

THE GALLIPOLI PICTURES.

DOUBTLESS those returned soldiers whose privilege it was to fight on the Gallipoli Peninsula have read with disfavour the following paragraph in an Auckland paper: “ The Commonwealth Government has purchased the famous Gallipoli pictures, the work of Mr Horace Moore-Jones, the well-known Auckland artist. These pictures show really more of the New Zealanders’ positions on Gallipoli than those of the Australians, and as they were the work of a New Zealander regret has been expressed in many quarters that they were not secured by the Government of New Zealand, to which they were first offered.” This state of affairs is merely another instance of the Government’s lack of appreciation of things which would be reminiscent of tradition, and would recall memories of Britain’s greatest war. The Moore-Jones pictures, while not masterpieces of art, were true, faithful, and cleverly-painted scenes of the fighting "areas of the penisula. Returned soldiers admit generally that the pictures painted by the then Sapper Moore-Jones were true portrayals that would be jealously kept as a memento by any fighter who had been on the peninsula. As is usual, the New Zealand Government, when the pictures were offered it, hemmed and hawed and then decided to take no action. Holding the term “ Anzac ” in greater veneration than did our money-grubbing law-making body, Australia eagerly bought the pictures of Mr Moore-Jones. With those Anzac pictures painted by an Anzac goes a portion of Anzac tradition to a country that did not‘do so much, all things considered, as New Zealand, but holds the sacred things of the war in higher veneration than we do. It will be a standing disgrace, and one that Parliament will repent for years, for the pictures to have left this country, despite the thousands who would have wished them safe in Government keeping. But in these days tradition and sentiment fall flat on our politicians, and “ Anzac ” apparently has become ; a name of the dim past.