The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 1922. IMMIGRATION AND THE LAND.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 103, 3 May 1922, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 3, 1922. IMMIGRATION AND THE LAND.

For the cause thai lacks assistance. For the wrong that needt resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

We may doubt whether most people have grasped the full significance of the Empire Settlement Bill now before the Imperial Parliament. This measure embodies for the first time British financial co-operation in immigration. Tn the old days there was official machinery in England for the encouragement of immigration, but it was so far from being exclusively British in its aims that it provided tiic intending emigrant with information about prospects of life in the United States. It was apparently a matter of small moment to those responsible for the conduct of this bureau of information that men and women who might have helped to build up British communities across the sens went to a foreign country. The new measure sets this policy completely aside. An official effort en comprehensive lines to keep British emigration within the Umpire is being made. The British Government is prepared to spend tM0.000.000 in fifteen years to transfer men and women from Britain to the Dominions and to help in establishing them there. The co-opera-tion of the Dominione is invited, and the invitation has been accepted: three Australian schemes have already been launched. We need not consider again to-day the complications of this policy ad It affect* England, such a» the draining away of men that are needed in the English countryside, and the obligation on the English Government to sec that rural land, so much of wliich ie given up to pleasure and sport, is put to better use. We are considering here only the highly important fact that the Mritish Government has acknowledged thai emigration on a large scale is inevitable. and ha* decided that the State shall

intervene to direct this stream to oversea parts of the Umpire, where younsc and vigorous British communities are growing up in countries capable of Mipporting populations many times larger than at present. This is an act of Imperial policy. It is a recognition of the value of tho Dominions as partneri in the Empire, and buttresses of British power. It is a grapple with what Lord Milner has called "the problem of distributing the white population of the Km pi re in the manner most conducive to the development, stability, and strength of the whole.'" It is profoundly important to Dominions exposed to danger following on "ineffective occupation." It is a recognition of the truth of the contention that the most promising field /or Rritish trade is the Empire. Every emigrant placed in file Dominions will ho to twme extent a customer of Britain and a producer of things that Britain need*.

Xow Zcnlandcis may ask whore they come in in this epoch-making arrangement. It U difficult t<> answer such a question. Our Government has apparently no definite policy in thU matt'r. All its energies have been taken up for some years pnst with fettling soldiers on tlie Inml. ami time will prribnbly show that it« success in this Ira* not

l ht>cn conspicuous. Even civilian landscekor9 among our own people have not 'been assisted. Thousand* of immigrants have arrived from Hritain, 'but they have not come out under any scheme of settlement. It is obvious that we cannot hope to accommodate anything like the numbers of immigrants that will flock to Australia or Canada. This is a small country and it must make its plan- accordingly. On the other hand it is preposterous to suppose that in a country as large as Great Britain, find one that i.s among the richest in the world in natural

resources, one and a-quartet million people is an adequate population. This country could eomforta'bly support several or perhaps many millions of peoplp. Quite apart from the growth

of urban industries, it could increase its

population enormously by opening up its unused lands, promoting closer settlement, and encouraging improve ments in farming. We draw ftttcntion to some valuable comments on this question that the Hon. 0. W. Russell make? in tlii3 issue. Mr. Rurkvll

rightly emphasise* the need for more population in this country, without which our huge burden of taxation cannot be comfortably carried. Ho urges the adoption of various measures to bring more lai.' 'nio production and to sub-divide lftr-je holdings, and he would begin t>y taking *to<-k of all the land in the Dominion ami dividing it into classes according to degrees of utilisation. We agree with him that '"if a Domesday Rook on these lines Were, organised it would be an ey-e-oponer." In short. Mr. tlus3ell asks for a land poltey—something national, vicorons, iind statesmanlike. It does not exist, and there are. no signs of its coming birth. The (iovernment lives more or lf>s by the hour in such matters. Xew Zealand should be able to take a fair proportion of tiro stream of emigrants that, is jto'mg to flow from Britain under t!ie new scheme, but aa yet the Government shows no enthusiasm for such a movement, end no signs that it i? making arrangements to take part in it.