A Centennial of Civilisation

This month 85 years ago, New Zealand officially opened its Centennial Exhibition in Wellington alongside several other minor attractions across the country to celebrate one hundred years since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi alongside European settlement.

Leading up to the event, a National Centennial Council meeting was held between MPs, Mayors and other prominent figures in the administration of the Centennial. The meeting was held in September 1939 to discuss the future of the celebration in light of the recent outbreak of war.

Daniel G. Sullivan, MP, Minister and former Mayor of Christchurch was in attendance but did not expect to speak. Questions were looming about how New Zealand would cope in another major international conflict, and whether they should cancel or postpone the celebrations.

The chairman of the meeting suddenly asked him to speak upon concluding his welcome. All eyes were on Sullivan and the short impromptu speech he gave highlights some basic sentiments that we all should reflect on as we near 2040:

It seemed to me to be appropriate, because surely anything that will cultivate - not in any Jingoistic way, but in an appropriate way - and develop the national spirit and bring it to a point of full expression is certainly helpful in a period such as we are going through at the moment.

New Zealand, through its people and through its Government, has made it perfectly clear that we are standing by the United Kingdom as an integral part of the Empire to see this war through to a victorious conclusion. While we would do that on patriotic grounds, we are doing it on this occasion on other grounds, too, and that is, an overwhelming faith and conviction in the rightness and the justice of the cause of the Empire in connection with this struggle.

Not only are our hearts with the United Kingdom and the Empire, but our minds as well are with the Empire. The point is: Is the Empire in its component parts worth defending? Are its ideals and its sentiments and its traditions worth defending?

Here in New Zealand, to confine my thought for the moment to our own particular country, we are inspired by the work that has been done by the men who have laid the foundations of our country. We think of the men who came here in the early days. We think of the magnificent courage that characterized not only the men, but also the women, who dug themselves up, as it were, by their social roots and, leaving behind everything that was dear to them, faced a new country where they would have to live under primitive conditions of life, a decision requiring not only moral courage of the highest order, but physical courage, too, on the part of both men and women.

So they left their homes and they came over the seas here to this new land, and they brought with them a picture - the picture of a land that they would live in - and having in their minds a picture, too - ideals of what this new virgin country could be made in the days to come as a result of their labours and the ideals with which they would inspire the country. So they worked, and they did wonderful things.

With the application of that courage to which I have referred, with the determination that has never been surpassed in the colonizing history of the world, they commenced their work of putting their ideals into execution. And so they built their homes, they built their farms, roads, bridges, railways, cathedrals, cities, and factories.

In a brief century, something has been achieved not of a transitory character, not something built on foundations of sand, but a strong civilization, actuated by high ideals, a strong stable wholesome thing of which every man, woman, and child who lives in this country or who has lived in this country is proud.

I cannot imagine that in this great moment of national trial, when all the fine forces of our nationhood and of our individual selves are required to be brought to their fullest strength, there is anything that would be more inspiring, more capable of developing within us those feelings of recognition of the worthwhileness of the country and of the British Commonwealth of Nations, than the outward material expression of the pride that we feel in the wonderful achievements of those men and women of the British Empire, of the United Kingdom, who came here and did that job which we to-day are trying to carry on. There it is.

I feel very strongly indeed that what I have just said is true - namely, that we could do nothing better to lift up the hearts and minds of our people than to make them feel the worthwhileness of the whole thing, of the calibre and the character of the men and women who came here from the United Kingdom representing the ideals of the people of the United Kingdom, and the things that have been achieved.

We should bear in mind, too, the wonderful Native race that we have - the greatest Native race on earth, with all the mental qualities - limited, of course, by the environment in which they have lived and the different kind of life they have lived, but possessing, in essence, all the best qualities of European civilization so far as the quality and calibre of their mind is concerned - and that those two races, the British people who are here and the wonderful Native race, find an expression in Centennial celebrations and in our Exhibition.

I think that we will be helping and not hurting the national war effort because of the inspiration that will come from the carrying-on of our Centennial celebrations. We will get it in literary form and we will get it in more material form.

The two things combined will help to inspire us and make us feel in a more emphatic and intense way that the great national war effort is worthwhile, because the people will know and understand the thing that they are making the effort for. The national sentiment, the national traditions, national achievement, national character, will all find their literary and material expression in carrying out our celebrations. I think that the Centennial celebrations could be well regarded as an integral part of the war effort, because of the moral effect that they will have upon our people.

I am afraid I have expressed myself disjointedly, but I am actuated by the feelings that the best course from every point of view is to proceed with our celebrations, and I do not think that our war effort will suffer in the slightest degree, but, on the contrary, will be helped by the inspiration we will derive from the close view and contact with the achievements of our country during the last hundred years.