LOST OPPORTUNITIES

Southland Times, Issue 19280, 26 June 1924, Page 5

LOST OPPORTUNITIES

NEW ZEALAND AT WEMBLEY “ATMOSPHERE OF PETTY AND SMALL IDEAS” SOME CANDID CRITICISMS. (Special to the Times.) CHRISTCHURCH, June 25. “The whole atmosphere of the place is one of petty and small ideas. It makes one positively sad to think of the lost opportunities. It is so forcibly brought home by comparison with Australia and Canada.”

These candid expressions of opinion regarding New Zealand’s section at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley were embodied in a letter sent by a New Zealander from England to a friend in Christchurch. “It is absolutely disgusting,” the letter continues, “to feel that such an opportunity for boasting New Zealand has been lost. The inability of the New Zealand authorities to recognise that Wembley is an Empire Exhibition, and not a local industrial show, has, to my mind, given the impression that, after all, New Zealand is only half-civilised. Though the politicians may talk of her as being a sister nation, she is such a small sister that someone will have to wet-nurse her for many years to come.

“We, who have lived all our lives in New Zealand, know that it is one of the finest countries in the world. We know all about her potential wealth and the progress made during the last 40 or 50 years. You would have thought that New Zealand would have tried to convey some of these ideas to the many millions who will visit the Exhibition. The whole conception of the idea has been missed, and you will hear universal expressions of disgust from New Zealanders when they return home. “The show of secondary industries would be quite in its place in an industrial exhibition, say at Rangiora, but the smallmindedness of those responsible in exhibiting these petty little samples of New Zealand secondary industries in the heart of the Empire only goes to prove what really small progress New Zealand has made iu the art of manufacture. I never realised it myself before, but why did they miss the opportunity of showing the people what are the natural resources of the country? A child of 11 with me expressed her disappointment with what she saw. Of one tiling I am firmly convinced, and that is that not one per cent, of the people who had decided to settle abroad would choose New Zealand as their future home after seeing the exhibits of New Zealand, Australia and Canada. The fraction of the one per cent, who did choose New Zealand, would do so by taking the long view that there would be more scope there, owing to the fact that civilisation, though started, was making only slow progress.

“No doubt the New Zealand Press Association will send out such accounts of the exhibits as it thinks New Zealanders would like to know, and that is the curse of the whole thing, the fashion having been set by the New Zealand politicians as long as I can remember.”