THE EXHIBITION

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 79, 30 September 1938, Page 11

THE EXHIBITION

LAYING THE TABLET

TOMORROW'S CEREMONY

The first official step in the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition will be taken tomorrow at 3 p.m., when his Excellency the Governor-General, Lord Galway, will lay the commemoration tablet at Rongotai. Interest in this ceremony is widespread. Obstacles which seemed to have prevented progress in the great fair have one by one disappeared. Yesterday's conference of delegates from Northland to Southland entered enthusiastically into the details of the presentation of a model of the whole of New Zealand, comprising all that could have been put into individual provincial courts without the expense and undesirability of duplications, and the financial response was most satisfactory, the majority of delegates emphasising that their estimated contributions were only in the nature of minima, and that they were prepared, if found necessary, to go further. The tentative plans arrived at showed that the display will not only be comprehensive, but that many New Zealand industries were willing to join in typical working models of a calibre that it would have been expensive for each province to have staged. The Governor-General will arrive at 3 p.m., and invited guests are requested to be in their seats by 2.45 p.m. In view of the fact that the ceremony will be an open-air one, and the weather may not be of the best, together with the impossibility of providing seats for the large number of people expected to attend, none of the speeches are expected to be long, and it is anticipated that the ceremony will occupy little more than an hour. His Excellency will inspect the guard of honour, composed of the First Bat- i talion of tiie Wellington Regiment, upon his arrival. Speeches will be made by the chair- j man of directors of th'e Exhibition Company, Mr. T. C. A. Hislop, Mayor of Wellington, by the president of the j company, the Hon. D. G. Sullivan, Minister of Industries and Commerce, and by his Excellency, who will then perform the laying of the tablet. A presentation will be made by the architect, Mr. E. Anscombe. * The laying of the tablet will be followed-by a brief service, conducted by the Ven. Archdeacon W. Bullock, Vicar-General of the Wellington Diocese, on behalf of all the Protestant Churches. The National Anthem will follow. Music will be played by the Port Nicholson Silver Band.