The Waipa Post. Printed on Tuesdays. Thursdays, and Saturdays TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1925. THE EXHIBITION.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1687, 17 November 1925, Page 4

The Waipa Post. Printed on Tuesdays. Thursdays, and Saturdays TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1925. THE EXHIBITION.

TO-DAY, with a flourish of trumpets and a big assembly of public officials and thousands of people from all parts of the world, the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition opens at Dunedin. During the next two or three months there will be a big exodus from all .parts of the North Island, and assuredly Te Awamutu district will be represented. Te Awamutu Borough Council and Waipa County Council have each made donations towards the cost of an Auckland provincial court at the exhibition, and though the total anticipated cost of the provincial court seems likely to exceed the money contributed if the present plans are adhered to, there is no denying that the province (including Te Awamutu district) will receive a big advertisement. The value of these national expositions of a country’s resources is hard to estimate in set terms. There is a wide range of opinion between those who profess to see in the exhibitions a mere squandering of time that would be better spent at home attending to business or farm and that of others who see in them the last word in industrial education for old and young. Used aright, this great gathering together of all that is fine in art and progressive in industry and manufacture is an objective education that surpasses any mere written form of instruction. Not only does the exposition afford a medium for the display of national resources, but it provides a means for mutual foregathering of interests for free comparison and discussion. Here will be found experts in all branches of manufacture to whom those in need of information can appeal. As a medium for advertising machinery or goods the exhibition has no equal. If something of value is shown there are hundreds of keen business heads to take note of it. The social aspect of the exhibition is woitb special consideration, as in Dunedin will be found visitors from America, Australia, South Africa, Fiji, Canada, and the Homeland. Impressions created by legislative acts aie no guide to national understanding.. Dealing with this aspect, a contemporary comments that the personal equation can only be assessed by the mingling together of people of varied countries under normal social and business conditions. The exhibition is 'the magnet that draws commercial men from all the ends of the earth to push their special goods. It is while doing so that they come into contact with the people of New Zealand and take advantage of the opportunity to travel in a country possibly hitherto unknown to them. These visitors from afar become the great unpaid army of unofficial advertisers of New Zealand. It is quite impossible to believe that any unbiassed mind can receive anything but a favourable impression of this country. Like a late great military* genius, it is little, but it is good. The eyes of the world are focussed on countries from which supplies of foodstuffs and raw material are obtained. New Zealand, already highly productive in meat and wool, is capable of tremendous expansion in both these directions. Every movement for development, every demand for industrial and commercial appliances and goods is watched by trade agents the world over. They are prepared to supply us. 'But the 'knowledge that is acquired by New Zealand producers at such expositions as that held in Dunedin will enable them to grasp how much of these wants they can supply from within the Dominion, how and on what lines to develop our internal resources in industrial and mechanical production. The Government is wisely giving every facility to the people of New Zealand to visit this great exhibition, and those who have the leisure should make use of it; those who haVe not the leisure, 'but who wish to develop their business by experience, are advised to make it.