GERMANY & JAPAN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 August 1939, Page 8

GERMANY & JAPAN

SUPPLYING CENTENNIAL SOUVENIRS ACCORDING TO WELLINGTON BUSINESS MAN. EMPIRE FLAGS & JEWELLERY. i (Dy Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON. This Day. According to Mr William Lacon, of Wellington, it is probable that when New Zealanders and visitors for the Centennial and Exhibition buy souvenirs, they will find that they have bought articles; made in Germany and -Lipan. New Zealand is already Hooded, ho said, with souvenirs from ihe factories; of those countries. He thought it wrong that llie Government, by allowing the unrestricted entry of souvenirs in the form of jewellery, no matter from what country of origin, should thus make it possible for the celebration of a wholly British event to be commemorated by goods of foreign origin. “It seems incredible that British flags used during the Centennial will be made by Germany or Japan,” he said. He showed a reporter a scries of samples of Gorman-made brooches, tiepins, ash trays and badges, each bearing the representation of a New Zealand scene, the Union Jack, Empire flags and so on. He described the samples as of inferior quality and very highly priced. He contends that permission to import Exhibition souvenirs should have been restricted by the Government to goods of British origin.

In regard to the importation of jewellery generally, he said, the operation of the import regulations, combined with the changed conditions affecting sources of supply, had resulted in a very unfair restriction on New Zealand imports. Up to the end of 1938, almost the whole of the Dominion's requirements in the way of fancy jewellery wore obtained from Czechoslovakia, but wholesalers, a large number of whom are Jewish, had since the German occupation turned to English factories, which had responded by turning out a splendid range of jewellery at reasonable prices. Under the import regulations, foreign jewellery was stated to be cut out entirely, and English fifty per cent. Licences were based on 1938, when imports from Britain were very low. The whole of his firm’s licences for the current year had been used up in Auckland alone.

Mr Bacon went on to say that despite the regulations there had been an extraordinary development in recent months .as, although the Government had declared that the importation of foreign jewellery would be entirely prohibited, a number of retail shops were now showing jewellery, not souvenirs, marked “Made in Sudentenland." He had felt justified in asking the Government to clear up the mystery, but the. reply simply ignored the, point at issue. Mr Bacon produced 'correspondence with the Customs Department to bear this out. The reply to him said that information regarding another person’s business could not be disclosed to him.

“I did not want to know anything about another importer’s business,” said Mr Bacon, "but merely why foreign jewellery is being allowed into the country.”