mgpcpastor's blog

The President of Mount Gambier’s Returned Services League (Bob Sandow) read the piece below at our Remembrance Day Service today. As always, it’s a privilege to be involved.

SYMBOLISM OF MOUNT GAMBIER’S SOLDIER’S MEMORIAL

When addressing the assemblage in Vansittart Park at the ceremony of unveiling of the Fallen Soldiers’ Monument on Sunday, 1st October, 1922, the Venerable Archdeacon Samwell explained the meaning of it’s various parts, his interpretation is given here.

THE TABLETS form the central feature, because they record the names of those men from the town and district who fell in the Great War. It is to perpetuate their memory that the monument has been raised. At the base of that record are

THE STEPS, which stand for God, King and Country, the motive on which their action rests.

THE FOUR PILLARS are raised above the record of their names, signifying the great principles they died to uphold, viz.(1) Righteousness; (2) Justice; (3) Freedom; and (4) Peace

The pillars are protected and bound together by
A CANOPY, which bears the emblem of the A.I.F. (commonly known as the Rising Sun). This expresses the determination of Australia to maintain the four principles inculcated by the pillars.

On the canopy rests
A GLOBE representing the World. This teaches that while the judgements of the nations comprising the world are firmly poised on the four great principles before mentioned, humankind will dwell together in security and well-being.

But there is a greater ideal in life than that suggested by these prudential considerations. That ideal is the highest point to which human nature is capable of attaining and therefore it is placed above the Globe, and forms the apex of the monument
It is
THE CROSS – The symbol of self-sacrifice. Christ-like they died that we might live “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Thus understood, the Monument will stand in that beautiful garden as a perpetual witness to the bravery of the men in honour of whom it is erected, and also of the great principles for which they fought and died.
May it remain there sacred and inviolate, and may its lofty ideals be transmitted pure and unsullied, from generation to generation.