THE BRITISH EXHIBITION COMMISSIONER

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 107, 2 November 1923, Page 6

THE BRITISH EXHIBITION COMMISSIONER

Considering the high qualifications requisite for the position of New Zealand Commissioner at the British Empire Exhibition, to be held in London next year, the selection of the right man for the post was no env/able task for the Government. Fi'ori) all that' is known of the finally selected Commissioner, Mr, A. F. Roberts, the Government appears to have made choice of the right man. He has many personal qualifications for the post of a representative who will have t£ meet, inform, and entertain all types and nations of men. He. is a New Zealander, and a University man; a sportsman able to meet sportsmen on common ground; and he has had a thorough business training of a kind that has brought him into close pei'sonal and practical relationship with the main products of the Dominion and their distribution, together with the purchase, carriage, receipt, and disposal of British goods in exchange for the exported products of New Zealand. In public service, too, especially during the strenuous years of the war, Mr. Roberts has well done any work that he was asked to do. Socially he is very popular. His speeches on economic iiud social topics have

always been marked -as having come from the heart. Above all, Mr. Roberts has shown that he believes in the destiny of New Zealand as the upholder of the best British traditions in business and social life in this far corner of the world, the very antipodes of GreatBritain. It does not appear difficult to predict that he will do credit to New Zealand and to himself as Commissioner at the great display of the spiritual, artistic, educational, commercial, producing, and other vast resources of the British Empire, to which all the world is to be welcomed in 1924.