GLASGOW EXHIBITION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 101, 2 May 1938, Page 6

GLASGOW EXHIBITION.

CULTURE AND INDUSTRY

EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT.

The British Empire Exhibition which -will be formally opened in Glasgow to-morrow by King George has been prepared at Bellahotiston, one of the public parks in a city which, though often maligned by the casual visitor, hae always made a brave effort to preserve amenities in the midst of an active and extensive industrialism. The grounds ill which the exhibition i« situated arc, in fact, as big as Hyde Park, London; the Palace of Engineering ie bigger than Trafalgar Square; and the length of one side of the grounds is the distance from Westminster Bridge to the old Waterloo Bridge. It will contain, besides the Palace of Engineering, two Palaces of Industry, a Palace of Arts, and pavilions representative of every part of the British Empire. These few details will show all who may have felt inclined to dismiss the project ae being just another of these exhibitions that in eize alone the Glasgow Exhibition will be no mean affair, and that in character it will be fully representative of the resources and potentialities of the whole Empire. t Making Life More Pleasant. A list of the buildings is. no sufficient guide to the purposes of the exhibition. It ie not intended to be a brief and intensive effort to sell British goods, nor to rival as a purely oommercial venture the annually and inereaeinglv successful British Industries Fair. There will" be a trade section in which orders can be booked; but the fact that the exhibition will be open for six month* disproves any suggestion that even this section will be expected to indulge in any whirlwind sales campaign. Moreover, a large section will be devoted to cultural purposes, and many of the pavilione are designed to show what State and municipal effort can do to make the life of the individual more pleasant. Again, there is to be a recreational section devoted to amusements for visitors. In many ways therefore the main purpose will be educational rather than commeTcinl. and the exhibition will be most suitably situated in a country whose people have consistently shown both a splendid passion for education and an unrivalled talent ! for commerce. The predominance of the Scots I in business is proverbial, but it is not yet so well known that the number of full-time students in Scottish universities is more than double the number in England in proportion to the population. A Race of Empire Builders. These are not the only reasons why an Empire Exhibition is fittingly held in Scothind. No people has done more to develop the Empire. Though the population of Scotland is under between 1011 and 19.11 no fewer than 030.000 people emigrated from it he country, and most of them went oversea. i Indeed, ever since the Middle Apes the Scots (have been continually a link, and sometimes jpracticallv the only link, between these islands and other countries. Xor have those who stayed at home failed to show the same adventurous and inquiring spirit. An exhibition which is designed to portray, among other tliniiTS. the matured fruits of industrial and scientific discoveries could hardly find a more appropriate home than the country of Kelvin, Lister and Watt, nor fail to profit by its contiguity to what is still the greatest shipbuilding centre in the world. It is indeed out of the persistence o£ the constructively ndven- : turons spirit in Scotland that the present exhibition has tieen conceived. A famous spot in a famous land may well hope to attract a multitude of visitors. The organisers have whispered of a total of twenty millions, and "tliov deserve that their hopes should be fully ' i realised.