Moresby RSL Discusses

War Memorial

Prom a Special Correspondent

Port Moresby, Feb. 2.

A GENERAL meeting of the Port Moresby sub-Branch of the RSL, at which the Administrator, Colonel J. K. Murray, was present as a member, was held at the RSL Club Rooms on January 31.

Special visitors were Brigadier Browne, well-known in and out of Moresby dur ing the war days, now Secretary-General of the ANZAC Division of the Imperial War Graves Commission and also Hono rary Secretary and executive member of the Australian Battlefields Memorial Committee; Colonel Murphy, veteran of the 10th Battalion, Ist AIF, who has lived in England since the first World War and represents the United Kingdom Division of the War Graves Commission; and Air Commodore Anderson, of the RAAF, They had just completed a short visit to the war cemeteries at Rabaul and Lae. Colonel Murphy interested the veterans of World War I with his ac count of the condition of Australian war cemeteries in England and Europe and told of arrangements made in connection with Australian dead of the 1939-45 war in those areas.

The main business of the evening was discussion of the proposal of the Aus tralian Battlefields Memorial Committee for the erection, at Port Moresby, of one of the three Australian national war memorials.

There had been much local opposition

to memorials of a conventional non utilitarian type, but after hearing Briga dier Browne, who stressed the idea of parmanency in such memorials (and in this he was supported by the Administra tor) the meeting unanimously endorsed the proposal to erect a non-utilitarian memorial. % There was also considerable discus sion as to the suitability of Moresby as a site for such a memorial. Brigadier Brown pointed out that no final decision had been made on this, nor as to the exact type of structure, which would probably be selected by a panel of ex perts from designs submitted competi tively.

About 120 people attended the meeting.

A quantity of American canned beer was made available by the Club, and there was a friendly old-soldier atmosphere about the social side of the function.

The gathering was extremely representa tive, with members who had served in every branch of the service and every theatre of war, in attendance.