Our First Century.

It is not too early to begin thinking about the methods of celebrating New Zealand's centenary as a British country, which comes round in a little over eight years' time. The present period of financial stress will pass, we are surely due for a cycle of prosperity before 1940. Ways and means will be found; there need be no hesitation about that. Auckland city, through the Mayor, has already put forward for consideration a tentative scheme for a week's historical pageant illustrating the pioneer history of the colony and Auckland in particular. This programme appeals greatly to the imagination. It is proposed to reproduce scenes that live in our history—the early contact of pakeha and Maori in peace and war, the coming of the pioneer ships, the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, some of the stirring episodes of the wars, the old-time regiments, the picturesque Maori life of the days when New Zealand was young.

There is a vast amount of work in the preparation of such a moving pageant, and it will require much money, but Auckland will be equal to it, and if it is gone about in the manner in which a great film company produces its best work it will be an enormous attraction to the Dominion's people. It will, too, attract visitors from overseas, and it should be devised largely with that end in view. It will pay, there is no doubt about that.

So, too, with the Centenary Exhibition which it is suggested should be held in Wellington. Our Capital City certainly is entitled to its turn of such an exhibition, epitomising the progress of a century of endeavour and the production, wealth, novelty, and beauty of our land. It is something big for which to plan; a great and fitting crown to our first hundred years as a civilised land.