Fairs Enough

Dapper Grover Whalen, president of the New York World's Fair scheduled to open on the Flushing Meadows April 30, 1939, stepped aboard the Normandie last week. He was bound for the International Bureau of Expositions in Paris to get his Fair officially recognized. The Bureau consists of 22 nations who got together in 1928, decided that there were too many international fairs, agreed to sanction only one a year. The U. S. is not a member of the Bureau and Mr. Whalen's visit at this time is only a matter of form, but the Bureau's blessing will be useful. Twenty-four U. S. State Legislatures have already decided to participate officially. Missouri has voted $250,000; Pennsylvania & Hawaii are considering bills appropriating $500,000 and $300,000 respectively. Grinning cheerily Mr. Whalen declared that his fair was running four months ahead of schedule.

Across the Atlantic, the Paris Exposition, stuck in the mud of Labor discontent, was not going anything like so well (TIME, May 3). Originally scheduled to open May 1, it is currently trying to be ready for visitors May 25. Last week Premier Blum was gloomily sticking to that date, despite the pessimism of his opponents, when news broke that cast him into still deeper gloom.

It was revealed in Germany that for many months 5,000 Nazi workers have been constructing at Diisseldorf on the Rhine a fair covering 192 acres, with 42 exhibition halls, 30 pavilions, 20 restaurants and cafes, an amusement park. Nazi censorship had kept the secret safe from the rest of the world.

The Schaffendes Volk (Creative People) Exposition, timed to steal the thunder of the Paris Exposition and show up French "incompetence," will be opened this week (May 8) by Air Minister Colonel-General Hermann Wilhelm Goring. The Fair will publicize the aims and accomplishments of Germany's Four-Year Plan, especially such synthetic products as artificial rubber, textiles, gasoline. Also emphasized will be Germany's progress in city-planning, home-construction and horticulture. In the garden show alone will be more than a million varieties of plants and flowers.

Meanwhile in Rome, Benito Mussolini wielded a spade in heavy rain last week, planted three pines to mark the site of Italy's 1941 World exhibition on the road to Rome's seaport, Ostia. Work began at once on the exhibition's buildings which will be permanent, will become a new suburb of Rome after the show is over.

Other fairs scheduled for the next three years include the British Empire Exhibition in Glasgow, Scotland (1938); the Tokyo International Exposition to mark the 2,600th anniversary of the founding of the Japanese Empire (1940); the San Francisco Bay Exposition to celebrate the new bridge from San Francisco to Oakland opened last autumn (February 1939). Ruled out by the International Bureau of Expositions as a fair-of-the-year, the San Francisco Bay Exposition will be a local fair.

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