THE EXHIBITION'S SUCCESS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19215, 2 January 1926, Page 8

THE EXHIBITION'S SUCCESS.

There is ground for widespread satisfaction in the success so far attained by the Exhibition at Dunedin. To that success the enthusiastic New Year festivities, as well as the very fine attendance of over 50,000 registered in connection with them, bear impressive witness. The festivities were organised on a scale befitting the great institution that the exhibition has proved to be, and the attendance establishes a second record in New Zealand —the other being the achievement on the opening day. Now that the Auckland Oourt makes visible the interest that this city and province take in the venture, it may be reiterated in these columns, without provoking criticism, that the interest has always been felt. Its expression was tardy,, discreditably so; and there was lacking a fully practical handling of the arrangements for the Auckland display. But adverse comment upon that lack—such comment as has been made in these columns and elsewhere in the North, at all events —has applied to failure in method rather than in spirit. If this failure has been interpreted in Dunedin as betokening a general absence of interest here, that interpretation has been quite mistaken. The question as to where the blame actually lies for the tardiness may well be buried in the grave of the Old Year. Suffice it that the New Year sees the Auckland Court in being and Aucklanders flocking to Dunedin. It may be hoped, moreover, that the exhibition, which is far from being merely a. Dunedin affair, will do much before it is over to strengthe/i the realisation that New Zealand is a unit. Southerners have been overprone to descant upon Auckland's peninsularity and Northerners to over-emphasise the South's lying a little off the line of New Zealand's most direct communication with the outside world. Recognition that these tendencies make too much of minor geographical facts, without real national importance, would be a gain all round.