A Visit to the Franco-British Exhibition.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 9, 26 August 1908, Page 52

A Visit to the Franco-British Exhibition.

(By Pierrot.) I have been once to the Exhibition. That is as though a day-tripper to the French capital were to say, “I have seen Paris.” What have I brought back? A jumble of infinitely numerous impressions dominated by a vision of endless beautiful white castles and palaces edging a series of peaceful lakes and canals—a vision of a great mediaeval Italian city, but as staringly, dazzlingly new as it might have been in the days of Hie Medici. And although one goes upon these waters in motor-boats, they are electrically driven and move in such wondrous silence, that one is apparently in a rowing-boat with a big watch or a little clock ticking away somewhere beneath one’s feet. Thus the illusion is not spoiled. “I do not care for exhibitions,” said a relative to me the other day, which seems to me as though one should say, “I do not care for the wonders of civilisation concentrated and accummulated.” If he admits the inference I am prepared to allow the logical possibility of his attitude. Otherwise I cross swords with him, not only in defence of exhibitions, but in defence of civilisation against an implicit but unconscious attack. For here is not an exhibition in the ordinary sense, but the quintessence not merely of this, or that, or the other, but of EVERYTHING—or at least of everything that has social significance. To the Utopian, the dreamer of a better and more efficient world, such a collection is inexpressibly fascinating. Here you have exihiots that show the latest economical applications of electricity to the work of the household, there arc shown the latest projects for the housing of the worker, or an ideal arrangement of a school class-room, here, there and everywhere you see how things are conceived and planned and made that hitherto you had accepted as finished, concrete realities. Outside you see the whole bodies of things; here they are dissected and explained, as you have never seen them dissected and explained before, and may never see them again. Your mind works incessantly, not at sight-seeing, but at learning the real inwardness of a complex civilisation. Then you see palaces of art—aesthetic and applied. Hence the idealiser of the past, or the worshipper of specialized forms of beauty, can maintain his warfare with the utilities to the top of his bent. And he has material to work upon for weeks and months without casting the most fleeting glance upon a Maxim gun, or a spiral lathe, or an electric motor. Or the musical-minded can feast upon the strains of four of the greatest bands or the two great nations, without once hearing the “cough” of a suction gas plant, or the buzzing of wheels from the palace of machinery. Hence there is something for everybody; each can look intently on the facet of civilisation that appeals most to him, and neglect that which appeals to his fellows.

Then, for the more frivolous, there are those endless nausea-producing, heart-tearing monstrosities that mark some new adaptation of the dreadful old switchback; there is the more stately giant nan-lifting pair of cranes that are collectively but inexplicably described as a “Flip-Flap”; there are free cinematograph “shows” to advertise a French railway, and sixpenny ones to show a French firm’s films; there are innumerable “side-shows” with weirdly-costumed people to emphasize their attractiveness with all the colloquialism of Coney Island or an English provincial fair. The gourmand and the gourmet are catered for in a profusion of restaurants, at which you can get a meal at anything from sixpence to the best part of a pound. I can conceive of no human being who could not find something to enjoy or to learn in this collection of universal wonders. The doctor, the social reformer, the clectircian, the railway engineer, the architect, the connoisseur, the musician, equally with the child, the glutton, the drunkard, the fop and the imbecile can here pass many hours of instruction or delight. But above all it is to the man of wide interests that this vast collection makes it greatest appeal. And after all, ■why cannot we have wide interests? Why cannot a man see the poetry of great machinery—symbol of the power of man—equally with the poetry of great art—symbol of the greatness of man’s soul? I suppose the journalist is the only man who has professionally to be interested in every aspect of human life; but why do people want perpetually to be “professing,” and why should they limit themselves to the interests of a clique, bind themselves with the iron hoops of a fixed idea? Perhaps that is the finest purpose of a great exhibition —to interest one man in the work and aims of others; to bring civilisation into ordered relationship, and implant an active sense of human progress. As I mingled with tens

of thousands of people, settw and feeble, loitering and strenuous, prosperous and down-at-heels— l could not avoid the coaclMsioe that « very large proportion of this inchoate mass of men and women might be unconsciously learning the greatest lesson of their life-time—gaining the sense of civilized co-operation and civilized purpose! Ordinarily we are so blinded by, theoretic imagination, by terminology, by false idealism ; here all is dear, naked, unexplained reality. The facts are there as facts of life; the theory, good or bad, is your own. Thus nothing limits you as you may be limited to a lecture or a play; you only limit yourself. From whirring machinery to the soft mellow languishing tones of a Guards* band, and on through discordant yells from Cockney door porters in three-cor-nered hats and knee-breeches, on again through a Babel of voices, projecting and admiring and smartly business-like, I regained the water, and silently glided through a good part of a mile of Venicelike streets to a crowded exit. The greatest sense remaining to me —and there is no sense of it all that is not one of gieacuess—is that of a world in miniature. And you cannot see the world in a day, even when it is most cleverly concentrated for you within the enclosure of a great exhibition. A man with specialized interests could easily spend fifty or sixty hours in seeing the exhibits bearing upon his subject; I think it is no exaggeration to say that the man with general interests could visit thg grounds fifty times and still find new sources of instruction. The newspaper description of the place as “The Great White City” is in no way an exaggeration. It is a city in which you are constantly getting lost, a city in which you see human nature, satisfy your senses and enlarge your knowledge. I have already derived life-long profit from the Great White City, and mors remains to come.