The Northern Advocate Daily "Northland First." TUESDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1937. CENTENNIAL COURT

Northern Advocate, 28 December 1937, Page 4

The Northern Advocate Daily "Northland First."

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1937. CENTENNIAL COURT

Registered for transmission through the post as a Newspaper. ■ »

An editorial in a recent issue of the “Taranaki Herald,” relative to the establishment of a Taranaki Court at the Centennial Exhibition, has particular applicability to Northland at the moment, the arguments used in connection with Taranaki being appropriate to this territory. It says little for the unity of the Taranaki province, remarks the “Herald,”’ if agreement cannot be reached on the question of providing a Taranaki court at the Centennial Exhibition at Wellington in 1940. The occasion is one unique in the annals of the Dominion. Thousands of visitors from overseas will attend the exhibition and the celebrations and the success of the gathering seem assured. The Centennial Exhibition will be national in. character, and every important province will be represented by a court. It would be regrettable if a prosperous and scenieally favoured province like Taranaki decided not to be represented at the exhibition, which is expected to attract 5,000,000 visitors. For years Taranaki has complained that it is being sidetracked in the arrangement of tourist routes. The Centennial Exhibition thus provides a splendid opportunity for emphasising the province’s attractions at a time when great numbers of overseas tourists will be in the country and when New Zealanders from Bluff to the North Cape will be gathered together at Wellington. Taranaki would have to wait for scores of years for such an opportunity to occur again. The “Herald” then goes on to make observations which also have a distinct bearing upon the promotion of -a Northland Court at the Centennial Exhibition. The province must, of course, it says, make provision for the fitting celebration of its own centenary in 1941. That fact, however, should not lead Taranaki local bodies into regarding the national Centennial Exhibition at Wellington from a short-sighted and parochial point of view. The amount required for a court is £4OOO and it is confidently hoped by the ‘exhibition organisers that the figure returned will be very close to 20s. in the £; the Dunedin Exhibition returned 16s. Id in the £. Taranaki, accordingly, will be asked to contribute very little, in reality, for the privilege of being represented in an exhibition that should be the finest and most successful ever held in the Dominion. Northlanders may with advantage apply these statements to themselves