THE BRITISH WAY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 August 1939, Page 5

THE BRITISH WAY

■‘LIFE IN THE OLD GIRL YET."

I may have missed a few of the Dominions and a good many of the Crown Colonies, but nevertheless I saw enough to come away feeling that there is a lot of “life in the old girl yet," said Mr Walker Yippman, the American publicist, in writing of a visit to the British pavilion at the New York World's Fair. In fact, it seemed to me that the inherent strength of Britain was most surely revealed in the good manners of the British exhibit, in the total absence of vain-glory and of the desire, manifested elsewhere, to knock your eye out. The British are exhibiting their tradition of political freedom with Magna Charta as the centre. They are exhibiting their social reforms, showing not. as in some other pavilions, that all problems are solved, but how much progress has been made in solving them. And the British are exhibiting very honest, and not at all showy, goods that they manufacture. What they seem to be trying to say is that they cherish freedom, and would like to work and to trade and to solve the unsolved problems of social living. 1 came away thinking that only the strong can be so modest, and only the honest heart can be so quiet.