CORONATION DAY. How Shall it be Celebrated ?

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 101, 7 June 1902, Page 8

CORONATION DAY. How Shall it be Celebrated ?

A GREAT quantity of ink has been shed, and much verbal steam has been let oft by the Coronation Committee over the question if r is a right and pioper thing to allow youngsters to exeicise their natural appetites on so solemn an occasion as the crowning of a King. Someone having whispered that a festival cannot be so called unless there is hood, the proposals to make the day one of fasting and damp grass have subsided, and the youngsters apparently are to be allowed to sing songs of praise and skip around with tight waistbands after all. The average person who is not imbued with the idea that the Coronation is a time for faces of asinine length will probably regard this change ot front as eminently satisfactory. * * * When peace vv as declared the people didn't starve themselves and look out for a good sloppy puddle to stand in to vent their joy. The success of a fete is entirely dependent on the physical feelings of the crowd, and those feelings are dependent on food. There have been no very brilliant suggestions yet in Wellington for a memorial that will keep green the memory of King Edward's Coronation Day. A general shivoo mapped out on mathematical lines, with trooops, school children, and citizens representing units in the general plan, is the sort of thing we do on any noteworthy occasion and forget as soon as maybe. The Coronation should be the occasion for pipular rejoicing, and the event should be impressed indelibly on the minds of the people of Wellington by something other than mere merry-making. -» • ♦ Is the Queen's Statue to be entirely forgotten? What more fitting me morial of the coronation of her successor than its erection at this historical juncture? The enthusiasm manifested when the proposition was new seems but a farce in the light of the apathy shown in connection with the matter during the past year. The populace of most cities can be persuaded to enthuse for anybody at all provided the occasion is made a public holiday. We want something to show that the enthusiasm is not ephemeral, and the result of being let oif the

chain of duty for a day. The whole nation at the present time is in a state of thankfulness that peace hag been secured. The whole nation's heart is open and its pocket yawning.

The people ot Wellington, particularly its rich citizens, have yawning pockets that should yawn wider than for the extraction of mere sixpences for children's festivities. Let them yawn an invitation for the extraction of good golden so-sereigns, bearing the image of our late Queen, to be used for the erection of a memorial that shall not only remind us that we lived in her glorious reign, but that the occasion of her son's coronation was the milestone on the r.ial of history which was marked by the citizens of Wellington with an enduring monument.