Anzac Day made statutory holiday

THE decision of the Government to make Anzac Day a statutory holiday should meet with the cordial approval of the whole community. All soberminded and thinking people will further agree, we believe, that Parliament has done the proper thing in giving the anniversary differentiation from ordinary public holidays by decreeing that on April 25 no race meetings shall be held and no licensed premises be opened. This will place Anzac Day on the footing of Christmas Day and Good Friday, giving it the character of a holiday in

the original meaning of the term, that is to say a holy day. Through this restriction upon the activities of a section of the public, Anzac Day will be the more decorously and appropriately honoured. The terms of its observance will thus be brought more in harmony with the fitness of things, and will be rendered the more complete.

Anzac Day is destined to live and to be our annual festival commemorative of the fine achievement of New Zealanders in the Great War. If there has been any tendency to narrow down the commemorative aspect of the anniversary to allow it what has been termed an unfairly monopolising vogue by reason of limitation, to a section only of the forces, of the recognition extended, this, we imagine will gradually disappear.