LAND SETTLEMENT.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIX, Issue 13, 15 January 1918, Page 4

LAND SETTLEMENT.

PROMOTING SMALL SETTLEMENTS. (Special Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, Monday. • The allusion of the Minister of Finance to the need for "email settlement," and for au enormously increased number of people on the land "to assist in mooting the country's obligations without resorting to crushing taxation' is taken to indicate renewed activity liy the Government in this direction. Of late there has been a tendency on the part of the Lands Department, in its very proper desire to make the beat possible provision for returned soJdiere anxious to take up rural occupations, to go clow with settlement of other descriptions. Of course, no one can reasonably object to preference being given to returned soldiers, but in any effective scheme for multiplying the 'number of small settlers to assist in meeting the country's obligations generous provision must *>c made for the civilians svho have had no ehanep. of going to the war and ■who are prepared to take up their share of the burden in the way suggested by Sir Joseph Ward.. The general tendency of population during the last three years has been to drift towards the hig centres, and tliie can be counteracted only by special inducements to city dwellers to move out into the country.