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Sun (Christchurch), Volume 1, Issue 8, 14 February 1914, Page 6 (Supplement)

The British Cabinet has definitely decided not to participate in the San Francisco Exhibition. From a distance this savours of a doubtful policy, whether considered as a matter of international relations or as a business principle. However, Australia and New Zealand are making arrangements to be represented at the big celebration. The Panama Commissioners, who toured the Commonwealth and the Dominion some time ago with a view to encouraging representation at San Francisco, made it quite clear that the Exhibition possesses an international trade significance. Under the latest scheme Australia, it is projected, will have some 24,000 cubic feet of space as an advertising centre. Information concerning the . Commonwealth attractions and activities will be distributed from the centre, and kinematograph displays will be given there With the opening of the canal for traffic there will follow the unlocking of unprospected millions of square miles of country beyond and behind British Columbia, and the as yet unsettled leagues of the North Pacific coast line. This, and the readjustment of the American tariff with regard to wool and foodstuffs, make it very necessary that Australasia, always on the look-out for new markets, should have space in the great show room of the San Francisco Exposition for samples of her wares. It is expected that fifteen or twenty million people from all over the world will visit the Exposition, and, taking.,all things into consideration, -it would have been a very short-sighted policy on. the part of the Antipodes not.to have taken advantage of such an opportunity for adding to their commercial greatness. And, as has been pointed out by a commissioner, Australia has huge empty spaces to fill, and it may be that the Exposition will assist her in peopling the unsettled acres.