NATIONAL RECORD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 December 1939, Page 5

NATIONAL RECORD

NAMES ON CENTENNIAL ROLL. AN HISTORIC DOCUMENT. Visitors to the Centennial Exhibi* tion have shown keen interest in the Centennial Roll of Commemoration, where everybody who obtains admission is able to register his or her attendance on a record that will be preserved for all time. First to sign was the Governor-General, Lord Galway, who did so on opening day. At the time when the Exhibition was mooted and the general manager, Mr C. P. Hainsworth. first, mentioned the idea of a visitors’ book, it was suggested that on the hundredth birthday of the nation something more than the ordinary visitors' book was warranted. As a result, the National Roll of Commemoration. and the issue to signatories of a Centennial Certificate of attendance at small cost, was decided upon. The outcome was that facilities were provided, at a special stand in the General Exhibits Court, for every member of the public attending the Exhibition to record his name in this unique volume, and to receive such a certificate. At the close of the Exhibition, the pages of signatures, numbering some hundreds of thousands, will be suitably bound, and placed in the Dominion Museum with other documents of national interest, commemorative of the centennial. The Centennial Certifiicate of Attendance, which is the personal and official memento of the fact that the holder has signed the roll and has participated in the nation’s birthday party, was painted by Mr L. C. Mitchell, well-known New Zealand artist. It is a work of art which every holder will be proud and delighted to possess, and which can well be framed and hung in one’s home, as an object of artistic merit as well as of memorable associations.

The Centennial Certificate bears the signatures of the Exhibition authorities, the seal of the Exhibition company. and the official centennial emblem. On his signing the Roll of Commemoration, the name of the signatory' also is inscribed on it. Thus it gains a personal significance, which associates every name upon the roll with the centennial celebrations. The stall where the National Roll of Commemoration is housed, situated almost in the centre of the General Exhibits building, takes the form of a Maori carved house, embellished with the ancient designs most typical of New Zealand legend and history. Masterton names so far recorded on the roll are—F. J. Heaven. G. M. Smith. B. L. Larson. G. Bradbury. C. F. Polson, Patricia Peek, E. J. Burke. T. W. Cameron, T. Vallance. H. M. Vallance, U. J. McPhee. D. J. Ritchie. M. T. McPhee, C. N. Addersori. O. F. Prior, G. Hanley, T. Shaw, R. G. Gillions, A. Oliver, I. Sinclair. J. Diamond, F. M. Horner, Thomas Dillon (Tinui), F. Bird (Tinui). A. W. Don, Mary Gordon, Norma A. Kirk, N. H. James, G. W. Sellar, J. A. Heaven. M. I Patrick, Marjorie E. Thomson, E. Youngquest, Mrs E. Hensen, M. Vennell. R. J. Fowler. A. M. Griffin. Katherine H. Joyce.