PUTTING THE EMPIRE INTO 15 MILES

Hokitika Guardian, 13 March 1924, Page 4

PUTTING THE EMPIRE INTO 15 MILES

(W. I’. in “Daily Mail.”)

A quarter of an hour’s train ride from Pieeadilly-circus thousands of workmen are making a small-scale British Empire. They are digging, building, hammering, plastering, painting, gardening, plumbing, carpentering—doing ail the things that such an enterprise involves—in the knowledge that their jobs must be clone by April. Wembley Park, where the great British Empire Exhibition is to be opened in April and continued till October, is perhaps the busiest spot in the kingdom just now. And cn a wet day it is probably one of the

muddiest spots. . . 'd’ve taken to wearing mountaineering boots." remarked the man who .had incited me to Wembley, "when 1 want to havo a look round." 1 should like to borrow seven-lea-gue boots —or a pair of non-skid stilts —the next time I go to have a look round. There will be fifteen miles of exhibition, and the pace at which these miles are being transformed from grassland into "foreign parts" is amazing. Places that were only on tlm point of being begun in the morning are almost finished by ten-time. At noun there 'are some bricks and mortar; at five o’clock there is a new wall. It, is like mushrooms —or the motor ears made by ffcnry Eord. And, so 1 am told, they are not working at top .speed yet; presently they will be making this new and compact British Empire all night as well as all day. It is going to lie a term concrete Ih'iiisli Empire—neat- but not gaudy, and absolutely fireproof. No modern Nero need take himself ami his vioiin to Wembley in the hope of doing a little fiddling while the British Empire burns. A quarter of the known world is. in miniature, being packed into this little hit of .Middlesex. Home industries and arts are having so many acres given over to them, and all the Dominions and Dependencies have been allotted their fair share of space in which ti "produce" themselves and their works. The exhibition is to make one-lotirlh of the map of the world conic* true without tlie necessity of cabin trunks - i,i- magic carpets. Simply by going —walking—whore the signposts direct, 27,()00.000 people, it is estimated, will wander tip and down and round and about tbe whole Empire. It is the only wav in which the majority of them can ever hope to see Soulb Africa and Newfoundland, Egypt and Hong Kong- and a score of other places which to them are just names on the map—for themselves.