GLASGOW’S DAY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 May 1938, Page 7

GLASGOW’S DAY

KING & QUEEN OPEN EMPIRE EXHIBITION TRIBUTE PAID TO SCOTTISH ENTERPRISE. INAUGURATED IN PERIOD OF DEPRESSION. (Recd This Day, 10.25 a.m.) LONDON, May 3. Guns boomed and aeroplanes roared overhead as their Majesties the King and Queen opened the Empire Exhibition at Glasgow in the presence of 100,000 people. The King and Queen first visited the Australian pavilion where the Queen fed a kangaroo with raisins. Mr Stanley Bruce presented'the Queen with toy koalas which she declared she loved.

Their Majesties spent a long time at the New Zealand pavilion, where they were received by Mr and Mrs W. J. Jordan and a group of officials. The Queen was delighted with a gift of a pair of sheepskin gloves. She chatted with two dairy maids who were slicing New Zealand butter, and remarked how appetising it looked. The Queen also enquired about the price and quality of New Zealand bacon.

The King, in opening the exhibition, praised the enterprise, enthusiasm and hard work which had made a town of over one hundred palaces and pavilions within a little over ten months. His Majesty said: “It is a significant fact that plans were being prepared when Scotland was under a cloud of long industrial depression and many people would have hesitated to embark on such a formidable scheme, which, moreover, inevitably challenged comparison with the Wembley, New Zealand and South African Exhibitions, but it is not Scotland’s way to be daunted when it believes that new enterprise is the safest insurance against a return of depression. I see in this enterprise a symbol of the vitality and initiative on which Scotland’s continued prosperity will rest. I am well aware that without the generous help and support of the rest of the Empire, the Exhibition would have been impossible. It now stands to testify to the willing co-operation which I rejoice to think is the hall mark of the British Commonwealth of Nations.”

The King paid a tribute to the variety of the products and the skill and resources shown in the fine pavilions which “I hope will be a meeting place of members of many nationalities, helping towards a better understanding among the peoples of the world.”

A hopeless break in the traffic and other arrangements marked the opening of the Exhibition. Many dominion officials suffered and some were forced to raid the stalls in order to obtain lunch. Mr and Mrs Jordan were forced to travel from the city to the Exhibition in a bus.