HISTORIC TATTOO

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 30, 5 February 1927, Page 15

HISTORIC TATTOO

FEMBLEY IN

TON

WORLD'S GREATEST

PAGEANT

Double the uniforms and costumes, quadruple the action, and compound the interest of the great pageant presented at Newtown Park three years ago—and tho result will give only a meagre indication of the grand military tournament and searchlight tattoo which will be staged at the same park during the Royal visit in March next. Here at the Antipodes the people will see and hear the best features of the famous "Wembley military tattoo which was the most inspiring and most memorable spectacle of the British Empire-Exhibi-tion, and even these will be supplemented by star items from the Aldershot Military Tattoo, 1925. The pageant of 1924 was the greatest ever seen in New Zealand or Australia, but comparatively it would be classed as a "curtainraiser "to next month's programme, for which 1700 performers will be supplied by the Eoyal New Zealand Artillery, the local Territorials and Senior Cadets, assisted by the' V.M.C.A.' and musical societies.

History's scroll will be vividly unrolled; a thousand years will be as a day. Famous queens and theii 1 mjiids of "horiour and soldiers of the ages will live again here in the "Britain of the South." Time will be pushed back through the centuries, revealing the romance /of other days. . .

■ Think, too, of the marching and playing of a hundred bandsmen in brilliant uniforms; think of a choir of hundreds of voices singing "Omvard Christian, Soldiers" and "Abide With Me" for that heart-touching . and soul-mov-ing Wembley finale when Britain's soldiers of the ages are paying homage to the .armoured figure, of St. George—and to those- crosses, of sacrifice, ' dimly limned-in blue amid the'red poppies of Flanders fields. ,

By night the-park will be a magic garden of lights. Searchlights will whirl their coloured beams around the ground; mounted riflemen will put a luminous plait on a maypole; cadets will make flashing play with coloured torches. : Those lights will smite the night, but the great rout of darkness will come with. tho brilliant and complex fireworks which will be an exact reproduction of the great Aldershot achievement.' This display will far eelipae anything of the kind ever seen here.-

Enthusiasm in Auckland was lifted to the.highest'point by the recent military pageant and tattoo; the attendances ran to 120,000. N Yet the staging her will be_ on a bigger scale, and better. If this were private enterprise—purely on a business basis, paying for all services of performers—the cost would be £30,000.' The undertaking is possible only because man and women, boys ' and girls,' acting in a proper community spirit,, are working freely and gladly for a community cause— helping the Community Club to continue its excellent. service for the benefit of all members 1 of' the Defence Forces, and to make a much-needed addition to regimental funds.

So strong is plywood relatively to its lightness that aeroplanes' bodie3 "aro now made of only five pieces of plywood, each SOft long. .

In Durham • early marriages are the rule. A larger proportion of the people in that county are married than almost anywhere else in the country.