Manawatu Evening Standard. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1924. EMPIRE EXHIBITION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 1189, 11 December 1924, Page 4

Manawatu Evening Standard. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1924. EMPIRE EXHIBITION.

Ix deciding to continue the British Empire Exhibition in 1925 it call be taken for granted that the executive was actuated by a desire to extinguish, if possible, the loss already incurred. amounting to nearly one and three-quarter millions. The subject of again opening Wembley next year has been discussed a good deal of late in the press at Home anil, in view of the announcement made a few days ago that, unless the exhibition was to re-open, the guarantors would be called upon to pay the full amount of their guarantees, £11.709.009, to meet the deficit of £1,800,1)09, little surprise has been caused by the decision. To many it must have come as a natural sequel. Though the loss looks so large, the ultimate value of the great exhibition cannot .he slimmed up in monetary terms, so tar-reaching must its effect ho upon the trade of the Empire. J n a recent issue of the United Empire, Mr Edward Salmon discussed at length the question : “Has the - Exhibition justified itself?” and Ins conclusion is a decided affirmative. Writing at a tiiiie when the exhibition had run five-sijjths of its course, Mr Salmon said: “That it has been a great educational force is unquestioned; that it lias generated a sense of Empire in thousands who hitherto have given no thought to the Empire’s story, the achievements which have made it what it is, or the possibilities of the future, is fairly certain; that it has heeii an object lesson to Britons not alone is undoubted . . . From the sentimental point of view it lias been a triumphant success.” Oil the major question—has the exhibition been worth while from the business standpoint?—the writer is convinced that the results have been very satisfactory and he records that many, having no faith in the exhibition at its opening and having refused “to come in,” were very soon afterwards eager to secure space. “For years to conic the business opened up at 'Wemblov will react on the work-a-day lives of men and women thousands of miles distant, arid it should he many a long day before the benefits of Wembley will be exhausted,” says Mr Salmon, who adds that established industries have made new connections and new industries have been started. After tracing many of the outstanding sales made by overseas sections at that period, lie quotes a Gold Coast official as saying: “We have done more to make known the resources and potentialities of the Gold Coast in six months through Wembley than we could have done in ten years by any other means.” The writer thinks — and he is no doubt correct—that this applies to every section, so that we in New Zealand should at no distant

date find our markets in England and overseas considerably extended- /lie records of the sales of the various courts are tangible evidence or tjie justification of Wembley, but this is, in Mr Salmon’s opinion, not the only way in which the exhibition lias justified itself. The conferences on Empire resources and methods of exploitation, the Empire Pageant with its moving pictures of the romantic past, the civic weeks, the women’s week, the jamboree of Boy Scouts from the seven seas and the rest —all have contributed to make the goodwill in the balance-shet a real asset, he says. “As the Empire at the end of the war was not quite the same that it was at the beginning, so, as the result of the exhibition, the Empire will, for masses of the British peoples, lie in November, 1924, a more concrete fact than it was in April,” says this very able review of the greatest of all Empire exhibitions. so happily described by the Prince of Wales as the Empire’s show window.

ART IN,THE DOMINIONS

Another writer in the periodical referred to deals with art in the British Dominions and records the conviction that “a survey of the courts devoted to the various Dominions in the Palace of Arts has not brought to light any marked national development, nor even any very strong local interest. For the most part, art circles in the Dominion seem content to remain art, istic backwaters, accepting uncritically dogmas laid down by teachers of the second- or third rank who have been trained in the classical traditions ot tile London schools.” According to this writer the Commonwealth has reached tbe highest level ol’ technical accomplishment along conventional lines, while it is only in the Canadian Court that the rise of a distinctively national school might bo traced. The New Zealand and South African sections, it is learned, did not seem to be shown at their full strength, owing probably to the exclusion of artists not permanently resident in these countries. But in tbe Fiji pavilion, there was a strong display of modern landscape work by three New Zealand artists who were not represented in the New Zealand Court in the Palace of Arts. Tbe experiment of bringing work from the Dominions for exhibition in London may be said to have been proved worth while, says this, writer, who adds that the exhibition, simultaneously with picked work by English artists of this and former generations, sets at once a standard of comparison from which much may be learned. A suggestion, the writer concludes, might profitably be made—for an extension of the experiment to the organisation of return exhibitions for the benefit of British countries overseas. Such a scheme, if properly carried out, would have enormous educative’ value for Dominion artists.