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Creating a National Spirit: Celebrating New Zealand's Centennial

Afterword: Reading the 1940 Centennial

page 272

Afterword: Reading the 1940 Centennial

The commemoration of the centennial in 1940 was a big event in New Zealand. The centrepiece, the Centennial Exhibition at Rongotai in Wellington, lasted for six months and attracted some 2.6 million visitors. There were large ceremonies at Petone on Wellington's anniversary, and at Waitangi on February 6, and in towns and provincial centres throughout the country. Hundreds dressed up in colonial costume, cleaned up the bullock drays and pit saws and paraded through the streets. Christchurch's procession on April 6 was two miles long.1 Even smaller townships had bonfires or picnics or sports meetings or children's days; while more than 250 centennial monuments were officially opened with formality and speechifying.

Other occasions attracted smaller, if perhaps more educated, audiences. These marked the opening of the centennial art exhibition, the centennial concerts, the national drama competitions, the first showing of the centennial film A Hundred Crowded Years; and the launching of a whole series of publications including a thirty-part pictorial, Making New Zealand, book-length surveys on aspects of New Zealand life, and a Dictionary of New Zealand Biography.

A great deal of social energy and public investment went into commemorating the centennial; New Zealanders took stock of themselves and attempted to come to grips with their history and identity. This opens up a way of reading the value system of the society at that point in time. Of course popular enthusiasm should not necessarily be read as endorsement for the big ideas of the centennial. People attended the centennial fair primarily for the fun of Playland rather than the more serious displays. They remembered the great white shark, the Jack and Jill, and the Cyclone roller coaster, the Crazy House, the mock Crown jewels—not the speeches or the government department courts. This was high entertainment, a Hollywood spectacular, in a world just emerging from the restrictions of the depression. We must also remember that the 1940 commemorations were very much a deliberate act of propaganda. Five years in the planning, with a considerable public investment, they represented a self-conscious effort to proclaim and reinforce a national value system; we need to read the values made explicit in the centennial events with this in mind.

It is also true that there was some explicit opposition to the commemorations of page 273 1940: many Maori protested, and so did a few intellectuals of whom the most characteristic was Denis Glover:

In the year of centennial splendours
There were fireworks and decorated cars
And pungas drooping from verandahs
— But no-one remembered our failures.2

But outside the Maori community, such dissent was rare, and in general few indeed remembered the failures. The overwhelming tone of the centennial was pride. Listen to the MP for Stratford speaking at the introduction of the Centennial Bill in 1938:

The bill provides for . . . the celebration of one hundred years of progress in this wonderful Dominion in which we have the good fortune to live. The history of those hundred years is amazing, and one which has never been outshone in any other country. Ours is one of the brightest gems in the Pacific: a real pacific haven away from the troubles of a distracted older world.3

Not a soul laughed.

It is also worth noting that the momentum of the celebrations was such that they were barely affected by the outbreak of war. Only a few events were cancelled, mainly in Auckland. Most of the major events were held, partly because the values they were designed to inculcate were thought to be even more relevant in a war situation.

The pageantry, monuments, publications, and public occasions of the centennial provide us with a unique window into New Zealand identity in 1940. Here was a moment when Pakeha New Zealanders, or at least those in positions of authority, quite self-consciously sought to give concrete form to a nation's ideals, traditions and values. So let us look at those values.

The most revealing fact was that few of the Pakeha population saw the centennial year primarily as a commemoration of the Treaty of Waitangi; and even fewer as an opportunity to consider the obligations imposed by that treaty. It is true that by contrast with the jubilee in 1890, when the Treaty was barely mentioned, there was a major ceremony at Waitangi on 6 February 1940. But this was just one of many re-enactments. It is also true that much energy went into the building of the Whare Runanga at Waitangi; but the way this was viewed by Pakeha opinion-makers can be judged by the comment of the Minister of Internal Affairs, W. E. Parry, when the plans were first mooted in 1936: 'The fact that the Maori people are loyally working to the end of having the Whare Runanga on the Waitangi Trust estate finally completed in time for 1940 shows that to them the centennial will be no occasion for mourning an alien conquest, but an occasion for rejoicing.'4

page 274

In fact Parry's hopes were misplaced. Both Te Puea and the Maori King boycotted the Waitangi hui on the grounds that the raupatu had not been settled and because the King had not been exempt from registering for social security.D Nga Puhi sitting in front of the stage displayed red blankets in protest at the compulsory acquisition of 'surplus lands' in North Auckland. When Sir Apirana Ngata spoke he thanked the Government for Maori inclusion in the anniversary, and concluded with the comment, 'In the whole of the world I doubt whether any native race has been so well treated by a European people as the Maori in New Zealand/ But between these tributes to Pakeha came a different sentiment from Ngata:

Where are we today? I do not know of any year that the Maori people approached with so much misgiving as the New Zealand Centennial year. In retrospect, what did the Maori see? Lands gone, the powers of the chief crumbled in the dust, Maori culture scattered—broken. What remains at the end of the one hundred years after the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, Your Excellency? What remains of all the fine things said then?6

And there were Maori protests in Taranaki and Akaroa. At Akaroa on 20 April 1940 the proclamation of British sovereignty in the South Island was re-enacted, and as the Union Jack ran up the flag pole Ngai Tahu murmured, 'Way goes the Maori land. Now the Pakeha govern the place.'7

But few Pakeha heard these protests. Newspaper comments on Ngata's speech played up his positive remarks, not his expression of grievance;8 and most Pakeha read into the Treaty other considerations than obligations not met. Some saw the Treaty as initiating British settlement in New Zealand; others as the beginning of organised government. It was primarily about British colonisation, not relations with Maori. To the extent that Maori were remembered in connection with the Treaty, it was to celebrate the success of race relations here. Cheviot Bell, president of the Founders' Society, said on 6 February, 'What we seek to mark today is the free entry one hundred years ago of the Maori race into the great privilege of membership of the Commonwealth of peoples that we are proud to call the British Empire.'9 The Treaty should be remembered because, in Prime Minister Savage's words, Tt symbolised friendship. It signalled the desire of two widely different races to live together in peace, tolerance, and organised government for the common good.'10 In other words any commemoration of the Treaty and indeed nearly all the celebrations of the centennial year were to be used to reinforce a national pride in the success of race relations.

Strenuous efforts were therefore made to avoid reminding people of conflict. When the idea of restaging the battle of Onawe on Banks Peninsula was mooted, Parry commented: 'One of the main purposes of the Centennial celebrations was to show that the Maori and the Pakeha had left behind them the few old disputes which occasionally led to bloodshed, and were linked now in friendliness to assure an page 275 increasing measure of prosperity and happiness for New Zealand.'11 Similarly when a centennial survey volume on war was proposed, it was rejected on the urging of Joe Heenan, who stated that 'the phase of the Maori-European wars should not be stressed'; and James Cowan's discussion of conflict on the Waikato frontier was excised from his volume on Settlers and Pioneers. 12

There were three ways in which the Pakeha represented the Maori in the events of 1940. First they were romanticised as the Old-time Maori, to give some sense of tradition and mystery to New Zealand's otherwise too short history. This approach was especially marked in the pictorial survey, Making New Zealand, in which the whole issue devoted to the Maori confined its attention to the pre-European cMaori as he was'. At its worst, traditional Maori culture was used simply to add exotic and sentimental colour to the New Zealand image for tourist purposes. The exhibition poster of 1938 showed a Maori maiden swinging poi in an alluring pose outside the exhibition buildings. The centennial emblem included a Maori whare, which Sir Apirana Ngata pointed out portrayed the doorway at the centre of the house— something unknown in any whare in the country. Such was the superficial character of the commitment to Maori culture.

The second theme was that of the Maori as great explorers, who as pioneers in their own right could claim a kinship with their Anglo-Saxon countrymen. The centennial issue of stamps, for example, included one depicting the Maori landing on Aotearoa (1s 2d) to accompany the portrayal of the Pakeha landing at Petone (3d). At the exhibition there stood a dramatic image of Kupe, the 'Maori Cook', at the head of the main reflecting pool. This attribution to the Maori of Anglo-Saxon virtues was a throwback to Edward Tregear's 'the Aryan Maori'.13

Third, there was an attempt to show the progress of the Maori from a stone age people to modern New Zealanders fully integrated into Pakeha civilisation. During the 1938 debate on the centennial bill, Sir Apirana Ngata jokingly suggested that what was needed was a display of Maori 'dressed in plus-fours and caps, carrying golf-clubs' which could be happily contrasted with tattooed heads in the background.14 The Pakeha had brought, it was believed, moral as well as material advances; and the two peoples could now boast the best race relations in the world. Lord Galway, summing up the meaning of the exhibition at its conclusion, noted that in the early 19th century the Maori were incessantly at war with each other; but the 'fair and equitable treatment' by early administrators had led them to appreciate 'the advantages of British rule' and 'the manner in which they are now living in harmony with their Pakeha brethren is indeed most gratifying.'15

Given that quite a number of Maori challenged such comfortable claims, it is worth asking why the Pakeha continued to make them. The major reason was that the Maori were barely visible to the Pakeha and so were simply not considered a threat. The number of Maori people at the census of 1936 was about 80,000,16 which represented only about 5% of the population. Three quarters of those Maori people page 276 were living in rural areas, many of them in rural Northland and the East Coast, a long way from the main centres of Pakeha settlement. Many were largely self-sufficient and had few contacts with the wider economic world. Their poor living conditions were simply not seen by the majority of white New Zealanders. Isolated in their own communities, the Maori posed no social threat to the Pakeha majority. They were visible only on ceremonial occasions when the Pakeha paternalistically enjoyed their ritual as giving some distinctiveness to their own rather two-dimensional society; and in those arenas of male combat—rugby and war—where their prowess confirmed that they were the equal of Pakeha males. It was therefore easy for New Zealanders in 1940 to claim the finest race relations in the world without fear of contradiction—except that is from a few leaders such as Ngata or Te Puea, who could be politely listened to and then ignored.

If the Treaty and Maori rights were not the primary focus of the centennial celebrations, there was little debate about what was: they were intended as a tribute to the noble pioneers. Numerous opinion-makers were quite explicit about this— W. E. Parry, Minister of Internal Affairs and the main enthusiast for the year's events: 'The Centennial was approached in a spirit of reverence for the pioneers';17 Sir Ernest Davis, Mayor of Auckland and chairman of the Auckland Centennial Council: the celebrations expressed 'our gratitude to those stalwart pioneers who so truly and well laid the foundations of our nationhood';18 Michael Joseph Savage: the anniversary was 'to honour the memories and mark the achievement of the pioneer men and women'.

Many of the centennial memorials were dedicated to the pioneers, or were explicitly called 'pioneer memorials'. Wellington's Hall of Memories on Petone foreshore opened on Anniversary Day 1940. Its art deco entrance was inscribed: 'This memorial was erected to commemorate the achievement of the pioneer and the first 100 years of progress in the Province of Wellington.' Elsewhere a high proportion of the memorials were parks or swimming baths, where people could regain, through exercise and the outdoor life, the strength of the pioneer. The pageants and parades always included men and women- in pioneer costume, with perhaps a bullock wagon or a pit saw to remind onlookers of the physical hardships of the

previous century.

As for the Centennial Exhibition, the foundation stone described it as 'commemorating the dauntless courage of our pioneer men and women'.19 At the opening the Mayor of Wellington, T.C.A Hislop, asked his audience to 'pause awhile and each in his heart pay a tribute of silent homage to those brave and adventurous spirits who in days gone by, journeyed across half the world to build in this country a nation'.20 On either side of the central tower were enormous sculptures of a pioneer man and a pioneer woman. The centennial film, A Hundred Crowded Years also evoked the struggles of pioneering: the long voyage out to a distant empty land; men and women riding into dense bush; then the chopping of the trees and the gradual page 277 winning of comfort, interrupted only by the drums and trumpets of war.21

This vision of a people of sterling British stock braving high seas, bush and fierce Maori, was at the heart of the pioneer ideal. The intention was not simply to pay a nostalgic tribute, but to encourage a revival of the 'pioneering spirit5, behind which lay two imperatives. First there was the view that the courage, discipline and enterprise of the pioneers were qualities which would be needed in war. 'The spirit of the pioneers', said Parry as if he were promoting a health emulsion, was 'the best tonic for New Zealanders' in their fight 'against ruthless tyrants'.22 But the pioneers had acquired particular relevance even before war had broken out. New Zealanders thought of themselves in 1940 as primarily a rural people, dependent economically upon the produce of their farms and distinguished from the old world by their more innocent, less urban way of life. They still held to the idea that city life made people soft and immoral; and that Anglo-Saxon vigour thrived best under the tough conditions of the frontier. By the 1930s, with a high proportion of the population now inhabiting cities, this vision had become somewhat tawdry. Doubts were being expressed about the nation's true identity. The centennial became a way of reimbuing New Zealanders with the tonic of the pioneer spirit.

And here we come to a major contradiction in the New Zealand value system of 1940. If the pioneer spirit should be revived, the conditions which had given birth to that spirit very definitely should not. The second major theme of virtually all the celebrations was material progress; and pioneer hardships were to be displayed as much to show how far New Zealanders had travelled, as to imbue an admiration for the nation's forefathers and mothers. A Whiggish view of settlers conquering a 'virgin' land with hard work and modern technology lay behind much of the centennial propaganda. This was the message of the centennial film, A Hundred Crowded Years, and it was strongly represented in the pictorial surveys, with issues on such subjects as communications, railways, farming, and industry, all showing the 'on-rush' of technological improvements. Transport improvements seem to have been an especially powerful symbol in 1940. The fourpenny centennial stamp illustrated 'the progress of transport' from bullock team to train, ship and aircraft; while the centennial medal issued by the Numismatic Society showed on one side a Maori canoe and on the other a modern ship and flying-boat under the inscription '1840— A Century of Progress£1940'.23 Throughout the country centennial parades demonstrated a century of progress: the procession would begin with horse and coach or axe and pit saw, and finish with cars and tractors. A number of centennial monuments, such as the pioneer memorials at Mount Stewart in the Manawatu, on Signal Hill in Dunedin, and on Mount Victoria in Wellington, were designed to allow onlookers the spectacle of wilderness transformed into busy cities and fenced fields.

The Centennial Exhibition itself was also a physical demonstration of advancing material progress. The strong lines of the buildings showed the possibilities of modern page 278 construction; and the central tower with 'its massive lines and well-proportioned height symbolised the progress and ambition of the young nation'.24 The dramatic use of electricity and neon—there were over 37,000 lights expending over a million watts—was a heady display of man's latest source of power. And inside the. buildings were endless displays of modern technological wonders. D. G. Sullivan, the Minister of Industries and Commerce, was frank: the fair, he wrote, would be 'an avenue for the spectacular display of the Dominion's progress—and that progress has been truly phenomenal'.25 In some ways the most revealing exposition of progress was the huge diorama/model of New Zealand in the Dominion Court, with roads, railways, ports and cities so that people 'could see the results of 100 years of work by its people'. Although in miniature, the transport and urban features were of course depicted out of scale relative to the physical landscape, so that the effect was to exaggerate the human contribution to the land.

Here we encounter yet another unresolved tension in the value system of New Zealanders in 1940, between material progress and natural beauty. For beneath the Dominion Court was a model of the Waitomo Caves, a physical display of 'beautiful New Zealand'; and much of the centennial year publicity promoted the country as a tourist's paradise. There was much emphasis upon New Zealand's native trees as a focus of national pride and identity. The minister in charge of the centennial, W. E. Parry, possessed a 'real zest for trees' and he several times editorialised in Centennial News on the need for New Zealanders 'to form strong enduring friendships with forests'.26 There was a scheme for school pupils to commemorate the year by planting native trees; and indeed the most popular of all the forms of centennial memorials was the planting of trees or the establishment of parks (76 out of 257 memorials).27 Yet few, beside the occasional intellectual such as Monte Holcroft in his centennial essay, The Deepening Stream, pointed out the contradiction between unabashed enthusiasm for material progress and the worship of the scenic wonderland of the South Pacific.28 There was no more effort to resolve this tension than that between admiration for the pioneer spirit and respect for technological change.

It is worth asking why these contradictions were not obvious to New Zealanders in 1940. It was probably because that generation had experienced vividly the gains of material progress but had not yet become aware of the cost. Over the previous 20 years a series of inventions had transformed everyday life: electrical power, the radio, the automobile, the refrigerator, the telephone. Most of these had been invented before the First World War, but they only became common parts of New Zealanders' experience in the years after that war. In addition, the economic depression of the 1930s had made New Zealanders only too aware by default of the material comforts of modern life. For many the hardships of the pioneer recalled their own experience in the years of the depression. On the other hand, some of the negative effects of technological progress—atomic bombs, pollution—had yet to become fully visible; and electricity promised a clean efficient source of power which would free people page 279 from the smog of coal and oil. So for a people just struggling out of the depression, economic growth and technological advances were unquestioned goods, and ones worth celebrating in 1940.

For my next theme let us begin at the Centennial Exhibition. Most visitors of course made straight for the Crazy House, the Jack and Jill, and the Cyclone roller coaster in Playland. Some visited the Dominion Court and the Waitomo Caves. Perhaps on a third or fourth visit, they might make it to the Government Court, a mammoth display of over 100,000 sq ft. There were displays of material progress and displays put on by the Department of Agriculture, Industries and Commerce. Defence provided a sense of the Gallipoli tradition. Eventually a visitor might reach the Health Department display. Its theme was The Healthy Family'; and it took the form of a visit to a walking talking robot doctor, Dr Well-and-strong. Dr Well-and-strong conducted visitors from the waiting room and around the display. There were helpful hints for good health and finally 'the Healthy Family in the Happy Home' exhibit. 'Here is seen a charming home in a beautifully laid-out grounds and a garden with fountain playing on the lawn, etc. Two of the children are riding about on tricycles, and while "father" is occupied with the cutting of the lawn, "mother" appears on the verandah with afternoon tea. This scene is used by the doctor as the basis for a talk on life with a capital "L".'29

Two sets of implicit values are worth exploring here. The first is the idealisation throughout the celebrations of the bourgeois nuclear family. Women get plenty of attention in the anniversary year, but consistently in the role of wife and homemaker. The centennial surveys, for example, included a volume on women by Helen Simpson which celebrates the colonial wife. There are chapters on wives of missionaries, wives on board ship, wives of pioneeers who 'tackled the new life ... with a kind of proud glee', wives of affluent settlers.30 There is little about career women, nothing about working-class women or Maori women.

Among the centennial memorials, too, women's perceived interests were well represented. Of the 257 approved memorials, thirty-five were Plunket rooms or Ladies' rest rooms.31 This was the second most popular form of memorial and Parry described the proportion as supporting 'the leading part taken by New Zealand in the progressive movement for the welfare of women and children'.32 In other words, the centennial celebrated New Zealand's pride in its special treatment of women, by encouraging and fostering their domestic role. At the fair women received far more than incidental representation. The chairman announced that since New Zealand was 'the first nation of the British Commonwealth to grant women the electoral franchise, and to make other equitable recognition of women's rights', a women's section should be a special feature. The section, which was reportedly thronged with visitors, had three parts. The first part featured two displays of furniture and household knick-knacks, one representing a pioneer hut in the North Island and the other an affluent Victorian home in the South Island. Then there was a section of page 280 women's arts and crafts ranging from drawing to needlework and weaving—all very-much a genteel middle class ideal. Then in the lecture hall each day there was a programme of talks interspersed with dress parades. The topics were described as 'every subject of interest to women in the home'—'the latest developments in the solution of the housewife's many problems'. These descriptions are borne out by the titles: 'Picnic and camping dishes', 'Simple meals to satisfy the family', 'Children's fears', 'Summer salads and salad dressing', 'What to do for burns', 'The art of icing'. The picture is clear—these were intelligent and helpful attempts to discuss matters of concern to women, but women whose boundaries were defined by their domestic role.

That this was the ideal of the New Zealand woman in 1940 is entirely comprehensible—for it largely accorded with the situation of Pakeha women in New Zealand. The vast majority of adult women were married; and of married women only 3.7% were in full-time employment in 1936—compared with 10% in Britain, 15% in the US. The union fight for the family wage was premised on the idea of a man supporting his wife and children and this was reinforced by the introduction of a 'family allowance' in 1926. In the relatively small cities there were few opportunities for careers for single professional women. The depression cut off some work opportunities for women and reinforced the protective ideal of the domestic circle. Women's 'home-work'—bottling pears or making marmalade according to Aunt Daisy—paid off at a time when manufactured goods were comparatively expensive. So the ideal of the domestically based woman was only part myth in 1940—it accorded also with experience.

The second ideal represented by the Government Court was of course the beneficence of government activity itself. The initiative for the celebration came from government and under the New Zealand Centennial Act of 1938 control of the year was vested in government. Three departments were involved—Internal Affairs, dealing with celebrations and memorials; Industries and Commerce, dealing with the exhibition; and Tourist and Publicity, which was responsible for advertising the events. Internal Affairs issued a magazine, New Zealand Centennial News; and the minister, W. E. Parry, was energetically involved throughout. There was a complex hierarchy of committees and subcommittees, a model of the bureaucratic state; and this structure imposed real control. No event or memorial could proceed without the requisite approvals; and when approval was given the government provided a £1 to £3 subsidy for monies raised locally. In introducing the centennial bill, Parry had stated, 'The year 1940 marks the centennial, not of private effort or of private enterprise in New Zealand, but of organised government. It is, above all, a centennial of government.'33

The Centennial Exhibition was organised by a limited liability company, but it received an investment of £75,000 from the government, which also invested heavily in the Government Court. There, government was represented as the promoter of page 281 economic growth and the guarantor of social security. The state was not 'big brother5, a 'bureaucratic' restrainer of freedom, but provider in a spirit of public 'service'— the display by the Tourist and Publicity Department was headed 'The Service We Give'. The official guide to the display included a detailed description of the manifold services offered to the people of New Zealand by government departments. There was nothing apologetic in all this, but an enthusiastic commitment to state assistance.

Again this reflected reality. Arguably, the 1940s represented the high point of public acceptance of the role of government. The welfare state measures of the 1930s, climaxing with the Social Security Act, had shortly been followed by a massive marshalling of state control during the emergence of war. Belief in the value of government activity was also of course a ruling ideal of the Labour Party, and to a considerable extent the Centennial Exhibition, like many of the publications, was designed to promote and display that ideal.

The final value expressed in the 1940 centennial concerns New Zealand's sense of itself in the world. Let us begin with the state luncheon in Parliament to celebrate the centennial. The speaker was the Deputy Prime Minister, Peter Fraser. He took as his text something Samuel Marsden had written a hundred years before: 'On Sunday morning I saw the English flag flying, which was a pleasing sight in New Zealand. I considered it was the signal and dawn of civilisation, liberty, and religion, and never viewed the English colours with more gratification.'34 The next day under an editorial heading 'Under the Flag', the Evening Post proclaimed, 'the achievements of democracy would never have been possible had the young colony, from its earliest years right up to the present, not been sheltered and protected by the might of Britain'.35

The centennial was conceived as a way of reinforcing and making explicit New Zealand nationalism. Yet one is immediately struck by how large a part the mother country played within this national definition. 1940 signified, not just the signing of a treaty with Maori, nor a century of settlement and government, but also a hundred years of membership in the British Empire. At the exhibition the first building you saw after entering at the main gates was the United Kingdom court, and there was barely an opening or an unveiling where either the Governor General or the British Government's special representative at the centennial, Lord Willingdon, was not present. Lord Willingdon himself commented shortly before his departure, 'Wherever I have been I have found New Zealand as British as ever before.'36 Despite Parry's strenuous efforts to encourage the planting of New Zealand native trees, others had a different perspective on horticultural nationalism. When the national flower show opened at the centennial exhibition hall, Sir Harry Batterbee, the British High Commissioner, commented, Tt was a delight to find in New Zealand flowers that were seen in English gardens because they formed a link between Britain and the Dominion.'37

These are the major themes of the centennial of 1940: a century of good race page 282 relations; praise for the pioneer combined uneasily with tributes to material progress and New Zealand's natural beauty; an emphasis on the woman in the home; a view of government as beneficent and wide ranging; and a sense of New Zealand's identity as forged within the Empire. When we list the values like this, they seem unsurprising and yet also peculiarly foreign. All have been subsequently questioned. We can no longer think of 1840 without contemplating the Treaty's promises to Maori, many of which have been broken and which we now have an obligation to redress. Pioneer-worship has gradually disappeared and we have become aware that material progress is often at the cost of both New Zealand the beautiful and our pioneer identity. Clearly a women's movement has emerged to challenge the domestication of women, and new right economic theory has questioned the value of much state intervention. A new form of nationalist assertion no longer accepts a definition of New Zealand within the British Empire. In these ways our exploration of the values implicit in the 1940 centennial has been very much a walk in the streets of our parents' youth. It is at once excessively familiar, and also a foreign country. I suspect that the enduring interest of the occasion is the balance between what is different and what remains the same.

1 New Zealand Centennial News (NZCN), no.14, 15 August 1940, pp.3, 17, 20.

2 Denis Glover, 'Centennial', in Enter without Knocking (Christchurch: Pegasus, 1964), p.37.

3 New Zealand Parliamentary Debates (NZPD), vol.253, p.450.

4 NZCN, no.l, 15 August 1938, p.5.

6 NZCN, no.13, 1 April 1940, pp.6-7.

7 Ibid., no.14, 15 August 1940, p.3.

8 For example, Weekly News, 14 February 1940, p.47.

9 Evening Post, 7 February 1940.

10 NZCN, no.13, 1 April 1940, p.34.

11 Ibid., no.6, 25 February 1939, p.4.

12 A. J. Booker, 'The Centennial Surveys of NeV Zealand, 1936-41', BA Hon thesis in history, Massey University, 1983, p.28.

13 See K.R. Howe, Singer in a Songless Land: A Life of Edward Tregear (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1991).

14 NZPD, vol.253, p.453.

15 N. B. Palethorpe, Official History of the New Zealand Centennial Exhibition (Wellington: New Zealand Centennial Exhibition Company, 1940), p.57.

16 82,326 specified themselves as half or more Maori or did not specify a percentage (Census of New Zealand, 1936).

17 NZCN, no.15, 6 February 1941, p.3.

18 Ibid., no.2, 30 September 1938, p.14.

19 Palethorpe, Official History, p.33.

20 Ibid., p.50.

21 NZCN, no.15, 6 February 1941, p.17.

5 Michael King, Te Puea: A Biography (Auckland: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977), pp.202-5.

22 Ibid., no.11, 30 September 1939, p.l.

23 Ibid., no.15, 6 February 1941, p.27.

24 Palethorpe, Official History, p.41.

25 NZCN, no.4, 10 December 1938, p.2.

26 Ibid., no.8, 29 April 1939, p.l; see also no.4, 10 December 1938, p.l.

27 Ibid., no.15, 6 February 1941, p.l9.

28 M. H. Holcroft, The Deepening Stream: Cultural Influences in New Zealand, (Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1940).

29 Official Guide to the Government Court (Wellington: Government Printer, 1939), pp.11-12.

30 Helen M. Simpson, The Women of New Zealand, (Wellington: Department of Internal Affairs, 1940).

31 NZCN, no.15, 6 February 1941, p.19.

32 Ibid., p.3

33 New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, vol.253, p.448.

5 Michael King, Te Puea: A Biography (Auckland: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977), pp.202-5.

34 Evening Post, 24 January 1940.

35 Ibid., 25 January 1940.

36 Ibid., 7 February 1940.

37 Ibid., 31 January 1940.