Four “Specials”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 634, 10 April 1929, Page 1

Four “Specials”

Publicity Expert Names New Zealand’s Premier A. ttractions THE AMERICAN VIEWPOINT “You do not have to eat a whole cheese to see how it tastes. “We want tourists to see all the things that are distinctive. Now I know psychology of Americans, so probably I can tell you what they want better than you know yourselves. “Let me name New Zealand's outstanding attractions to American eyes.” speaker was Colonel W. S. Tupper, of San Francisco, a silver-haired traveller and publicity expert whose voice is soon to extol the attractions of New Zealand throughout the United States. After a month spent in touring from Auckland to the Cold Lakes he arrived from Waitomo yesterday. Under Government auspices, Colonel Tupper will return to America in June, taking with him a special set of lecture lantern slides and the requisite knowledge of Dominion sights and wonders. Here are his four “specials.”

“In the South Island are the great rain forests of a type found nowhere else in the world,” he said. “What the imagination pictures as a green luxurious tropical forest is found in temperate New Zealand. I have travelled in ten or a dozen strictly tropical lands, so I know. “Then there are the South Island’s wondrous glaciers, rising right out of the forests. They present sights which one expects to be found only in Arctic regions. “In the North Island are the great thermal regions of unique and amazing variety, and the fourth outstanding attraction is the marvellous glowworm caves. There are great caves in the United States, Cuba, and elsewhere, but nowhere else can one find caves painted overhead with a million stars.”

Colonel Tupper’s lecture tour will not be of the stereotyped variety. He declared definitely this morning that he placed very little value on a mere recital and eulogy of places, sights and facilities. “I would not insult the intelligence of school-children with that sort of travelogue thing," he said.

One of his underlying aims—though quite an unofficial one —is the promotion of good-fellowship and friendly understanding between Americans and the peoples of the Empire. “A friendly alliance between English-speaking peoples is, in my opinton, the greatest possible assurance of world peace, and this makes it desirable that the citizens of the United States should come here as tourists,” he observed. During his month’s tour of New Zealand Colonel Tupper has been perfectly satisfied with both facilities and accommodation. "Tourists know that they cannot expect to find a bath in every hotel room in such a young country,” he said. “Anyway if they came here and stayed in a United States hotel they might as well stay at Home.”