BRITISH GOVERNMENT PAVILION

Evening Star, Issue 19128, 21 December 1925, Page 4

BRITISH GOVERNMENT PAVILION

HANDSOME ILLUSTRATED GUIDE BOOK NEW FEATURES FOR THE NEW YEAR NAVY, ARMY. AND ROYAL AIR FORCE. It is with no little pleasure that wo acknowledge the receipt of the handsome blue-and-gokl covered and beautifully illustrated official guide hook to the British Government Pavilion at the Exhibition. It constitutes at once a valuable souvenir of the pavilion itself, and a very useful summary of British history in many of its most vital aspects—naval, military, industrial, and commercial, etc. “ It has been sought,” we arc told in the introduction, “to show in the British Government Pavilion something of the past and present of the Mother Country, and to illustrate the manifold activities of a groat central Government in a world-wide community. One of tho first, (and perhaps the most vital) duties of such a Government is that of providing for defence. Accordingly, the British Pavilion contains in model form an epitome of the history and of tho recent developments of tho Royal Navy, the Army, and tho Royal Air Force.. Associated with those exhibits is one devoted to British .shipping, for our mercantile marine is in peace the link which binds the British peoples together, and wo look to it for the movements of troops and supplies, and for all those supplementary defence services which proved such a vital need in the groat struggle from which wo have so recently emerged. “In another portion of tho pavilion will be seen models of the English cathedrals lent by tho Dean and Chapter of Canterbury and prints or other reproductions of other famous buildings. There will he seen, too, an historical collection of the early machines from which it has developed our great textile industry, and space has also been found for a review' of railway progress, the centenary of Which fell, appropriately enough, during 1026, It is amazing, when one reflects, to recall that only 11)0 years have elapsed since Stephenson, surmounting incredible difficulties and in the face of blind prejudice, made his memorable journey between Darlington and Stockton on the first steam engine to draw' a passenger train on rails. than thirty miles of railway existed in 1825; today tho w'hole world is covered with a network of railways totalling hundreds of thousands of miles. It represents a triumph of courage and mechanical genius of which the British race .as a whole has every reason to he proud, and no more fitting and timely exhibit could have been found for tho British sctcion at tho Dunedin Exhibition.

“ It is inevitable that in any just portrayal of the historical significance of the Home Government its Imperial aspect must have duo place. No hotter means of stirring the imagination to an axjprociation of the growth and

meaning of the British Empire could well bo devised than the model map of the world which the visitor approaches through the Hall of Empire. The significance of sea power and the importance of a great mercantile marine are impressed forcibly upon the spectator looking down at the map, whore scores of little vessels are busy upon their lawful affairs.” The comprehensive character of the guide book is indicated by its contents list.—lntroduction, Hall of Empire, Map of the World, the Story’ of the King's Ships Throughout ihe Centuries, the Port of London Exhibit, tho Army Exhibit, the History of tho Conquest of tho Air, Radway Centenary Exhibits, tho Old Curiosity Shop, Historic Working Machinery, Industrial Art> Exhibits, \ietoria and Albert Museum Exhibit, Public Record Office Exhibit, the Heraldic Decorations. Guildhall Library and Museum, the Royal Mint, Acknowledgments. THE NEW FEATURES.

It should be added that new features for the New Year are being added to the British Government exhibits. The great procession of warships pictured in Ihe guide hook—lrom the primitive British war canoe A.n 800 and the Mora, of the time of William the Conqueror, down to our latest, capital ships, the Dreadnought (1000). the Iron Dnko (1924). the Queen Elizabeth (1916), and the Hood 0920)- will replace the Armada vessels at present shown in the Naval Gallery, and the exhibits of the Array and Hie Royal Air Force will be housed in the galleries, at present' vacant., at either side of the Hall of Empire.