HOLY GROUND.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18073, 11 January 1921, Page 6

HOLY GROUND.

By D.H.L. The recent impressive ceremony in Westminster Abbey—the burial of the remains of the Unknown Warrior—accounts of which are now reaching us, must, I fancy, stir the best in all of us. The idea was a stroke of genius. Who originated the idea is a matter of small moment. His or her name is best left unknown also. A great ideal was held up to all of us for a brief space. A .great and moving ceremony—almost unbearable in its poignancy, I gather—-was carried through as a nation of shopkeepers, curiously enough, seems to have a peculiar gift for doing. I have heard the usual cheap and bitter sneers: “What’s the good of honouring a dead soldier when you leave.the living and maimed ones to starve?” It is the half truth that is so much worse than a whole lie. It is the easy adverse criticism that sounds so clever, and yet which rings untruly. Men and women (and children too) have, thank God, an instinct in these things. They could not explain, but they know that lie who makes a remark like the above is ignorant, is seeking a cheap notoriety. They know, too, that the element of truth in the sneer must be admitted—is, in fact, admitted already—and that what it is possible for faulty, stumbling humanity to do to alleviate the worst distress is being faultily and stumblingly done—done, not by the makers of the sneer, but by those whom he condemns and at whom he sneers. What I have been turning over in my mind is this: Is the ceremony, with all its poignancy, the beginning and the end? Is it to be dismissed as a beautiful idea, to be recalled on,ly on stated occasions? It is not possible to live always in the heights, but the question is worth a few moments’ consideration. Westminster seems far away to us out here, and osssibly as years pass it will seem further away still—a thing of shadows. If that is true, then it. is worth while to seek, now, for that in the ceremony which shall help us to remember its meaning and beauty.

The Unknown was a member of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. He was in camp with you and with me. That may be literally true. Symbolically it is true. If the Unknown watched the procession to Westminster and stood at the graveside during the burial service —the most moving .of all human services—if he was your mate or mine, I wonder what message of hope and cheer he was bursting to given. I wonder what suggestions he would make as to what, we should do to make the sacrifice worth while. And most I wonder if we should listen to him if he did suggest anything at all.

Symbols and ceremonies are meaningless things without knowledge of the underlying ideal. That idea fades with time. It would ill become anyone, I think, to put words into the Unknown’s mouth. But it is open to us all to spend one quiet hour of one of these lovely summer evenings in earnestly asking ourselves what the Unknown’s sacrifice has accomplished and what, is the real meaning underlying our genuine but inadequate attempt to fittingly enshrine the ideal for which he died in the Empire’s Hall of -Memory. Here, if you will but stop to think, is common ground on which we may all meet. But. first take off your shoes, for it is also holy ground. And if you have made money out of the Unknown’s sacrifice—repent e'er yon draw near.