MEMORIALS IN PAPER AND INK

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 21, 17 November 1939, Page 8

MEMORIALS IN

PAPER AND INK

Pictorial Surveys Of Our First Hundred Years

: \ X 7ELL practised in the frequently unlovely art of erecting memorials, New Zealanders have become accustomed, even in a short century, to finding every second swimming bath, walnut tree, and public hall remembering something that everyone has, in fact, forgotten. But not until a fortnight ago did New Zealanders find it possible to put a memorial into every bookshop in the country; to buy a memorial on time payment, a shilling a time, and have it wrapped up ready for taking home. And not until a fortnight ago did they learn how really pleasant and interesting it was possible to make a memorial, if you used paper and ink for the making instead of stone and mortar. On November 1 appeared the first two issues of "Making New Zealand," a series of pictorial surveys of the Dominion’s first century. } In " The Beginning " "The Beginning" is discovered behind a cover photographed, selected for the purpose, and printed, out of nothing more or less than inspiration. Here are the mountains, the glaciers, the bush, and the up-and-down Sounds country. Later, the picture seems to suggest, will come the smiling farms and quieter scenes, as the people tame the wild countryside and attempt to justify J. C. Beaglehole’s claim that our historians discovered Sir Thomas More among the founders of New Zealand, along with Alfred the Great and Wat Tyler. "The Beginning" describes

the country as nature made it out of the sea bed, building fold upon fold of mountain chain, cutting out valleys, depositing plains, laying out bank after bank of fossil beds. It is a geological intraduction, with a time chart and an /explanation of technicalities to which readers will not find it needful to refer too often. The Second, and After The second number is "The Maori," and this week "Navigation" will appear with "Whalers and Sealers," the remaining 26 to be published at fortnightly intervals being as follow: Missionaries and Settlers Sea and Air The Voyage Out Communications The Squatters Houses Gold Furniture The Forest Public Buildings The Mountains Dress The Pasture Land Defence Refrigeration Recreation Power Racing Bread Summer Sports Manufacturing Winter Sports Tracks and Roads Polynesians The Railways The Changing Land It was one thing for a State Department to achieve the brilliance of this idea. It was quite another to arrange its execution. But with the Hon. W. E. Parry, Minister of Internal Affairs, and James Thorn, M.P., Chairman of the National Historical Committee, supplying authority’s benevolent smile, J. W. Heenan, Under-Sec-retary, gathered unto himself what his department affectionately terms "The Brain Trust," a collection of prime specimens of the specialist family. Each of the pictorials carries on its back cover a list of the primest. But there are others who, for many months past, have been busy brain-trusst-ing in a converted house overlooking one of Wellington’s narrow streets near Parliament buildings. In addition to the pictorial surveys they are producing a Centennial Atlas, and the paper-and-ink memorial will be completed

The illustrations on these pages. are the covers of four of the Pictorial Surveys, reduced to approximately one-quarter of actual size

by a Dictionary of National Biography, and a more ambitious series of surveys by historical experts. End Almost in Sight For two years now, and a little more, the illustrations editor, J. D. Pascoe, has been a magnet attracting a continuous flow of pictures and information, through the gate,

into homes and files and libraries and collections all over the Empire, to supplement the pictures and enlarge the available knowledge. Now his nose is beginning to come out of this immense sort of family album and, behold, the album becomes a series of publications as easy to read as the most popular magazine, as completely authoritative as a combination of experts can make them, as simple as school primers, and as unique, in the way of memorials, as New Zealand itself is unique in its geology, fauna, flora, people, and politics. Each pictorial carries a_ brief text of about five thousand words written by the particular expert chosen to cover that section. R. D. S. Allan is the author of "The Beginning." Ernest and Pearl Beaglehole of "The Maori." E. H. McCormick is their editorial mentor. Maps and drawings are the work of A. H. McLintock. History Recorded and Made A word for the printing. Although J. D. Pascoe has been responsible for the lay-out of the pages as well as for the collection of the illustrations that fill them, photographs have been prepared for the block-makers by Gordon H. Burt, of Wellington. The offset printing comes from the pressrooms of Wilson and Horton, of Auckland, who have used 12 point Linotype Bookman for the text, and sans serif types (Tempo and Gill) for the heading and captions. It is clear, too, that they have regarded it as in a sense their own centennial. Certainly they have — made it a prestige job. Notifying the Minister of Internal Affairs that the Education Department would buy enough to place a full set in every school, the Minister of Education (the Hon. P. Fraser) said: "You have not only recorded history, but, as far as New Zealand printing is concerned, you have made history." Everyone who buys these first two numbers and those following, will realise how true that is.

along the passage,-up and round the steep and twisting stairs, and finally into a card index. Here he has digested it all, measured it against the various standards of accuracy, interest, and a printer’s em rule, and now casts it out at last, with the end of his tremendous task almost in sight. He has been, in person, into all kinds of odd corners of the country to dig out his illustrations and information, and, by correspondence,