Fireworks
CORRESPONDENT asks toA day if we dont "find it shocking" that Dunedin should have "wasted" thousands of pounds in an hour or two on fireworks. Our answer is that we should have been shocked if Dunedin had not been willing to spend money on such an occasion in such a way. In other words we do not agree that the money was wasted. It was spent, and there may have been nothing afterwards to show for the expenditure but a hundred thousand happy people; but much money is spent every day, legitimately and wisely, on delights that leave nothing but memories behind. It is not foolish and wasteful to take account of the fact that there is a child in every man, a wide-eyed little girl in every grown-up woman. Wot to take account of that is foolish and wasteful since it is, first, false, and in the second place dangerous. Fireworks every night would be wasteful, or every week or month; but a few thousand pounds going off with a fizz and a bang once in a hundred years is neither extravagant nor purposeless. It is one of the thousand ways by which wise parents keep their children happy, wise rulers their people happy, and wise individuals their miserable little selves happy when they are slipping down the slope of over-seriousness. It is release from tension, escape from fear and darkness, at a price that the poorest can easily pay. Precisely what the recent display cost Dunedin we don’t know; but our correspondent says three thousand pounds, and if we double his figures to allow for the preparations that preceded the display and for the cleaning up afterwards, it is still only about a shilling a head for the vast crowds who looked on. It is not very reckless to bang a shilling i instead of sixpence once in a hundred years. Nor were the shillings taken from the world’s starving millions. They were.taken from the inhibited fools that we all are some of the time, and they are more likely to give extra meals to ‘the millions than to take a single crust away.
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 455, 12 March 1948, Page 5
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357Fireworks New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 455, 12 March 1948, Page 5
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