DOMINION DAY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 75, 26 September 1938, Page 11

DOMINION DAY

LOCAL OBSERVANCE

A FEW FLAGS FLOWN

Today is Dominion Day, but to most people merely Monday, another day in the year, for it is one of those anniversaries which nowadays are observed in New Zealand by a very small section of the community. Historically, however, today marks the thirty-first anniversary of the change in the style and designation of New Zealand from, a colony to a Dominion. In Wellington the banks and legal offices were closed, also the office of the Supreme Court, and neither the Supreme Court nor the Court of Appeal sat. The rest of the community was at work as usual. Flags were flown from some of the Government buildings and a few business firms also hoisted a flag, but even this observance of the day was scant in the aggregate. The Early Settlers' Association provided a real link with the past by being "at home" to their Excellencies Lord and Lady Galway. The observance by a small section of the business community of Saints' days, etc., is something which has been taken up by chambers of commerce. At the last annual conference of the Associated Chambers of Commerce of New Zealand the subject was discussed and a Wellington remit was passed advocating: (a) That alii public holidays should be (1) national; (2) defined by Statute only (not by awards); and (3) observed on Mondays j wherever possible, thus serving the best interests of employer and employee alike; and (b) that the Banking Act, 1908, should be immediately amended so as to remove the Saints' days from the compulsory holidays provided by that Act.