WHEN SHALL WE STARVE?

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 224, 20 September 1924, Page 19

WHEN SHALL WE STARVE?

IX (ABOUT 120 TEARS. Standing-room on this earth -will be full up in another ten centuries if the human race goes on Increasing at its present rate. By that time our descendants may all be negroes. Further, our own great-grandchildren will starve en an earth which will not fee* them all if this Increase continues. Worse still, the coloured man may oust the white. These are the startling propositions put before the British Association to-day by Professor J. W. Gregory, D.Sc, F.K.S., president of the Geography Section, in his address at the Toronto meeting. "From 1906 to 1910," he said, "the population of' the world grew at the rate ot doubling in sixty years. "If this rate were maintained the 0600 millions of people which, it is calculated, Is the most that the world can feed would be in existence in 120 years. Struggling for Land. "Even if the food supply were Indefinitely multiplied by the precipitation of the nitrogen of the atmosphere as a constant rain of manna, standing-room on the earth, exclusive of the remoter Arctic and Antarctic, would be all filled when the population numbered TOO billion (TOO million million*) in the year 3000." The terrible struggle of the races for land even in 1921 was vividly outlined by iProfessor Gregory. "The struggle for expansion, -which was the ultimate motive of the world war of 1314-18, will inevitably be still more bitter and terrible if it became a straggle for existence between the white and coloured races. "The problem of the present century U the problem of the colour line. "The alternative to world races In cooperation in the future is dark. Europe during the past fifty years may have taken on tasks beyond its power. Negroes in Europe. j "The drain on sbcteenth-centuiy Porta- 1 gal's manhood by its vast colonial empire \ haired the home population, land went out of cultivation, famine came, and negroes Introduced to till derelict farms were absorbed into the nation. "The dilution of the Portuguese by negro blood is often regarded as one of the main causes in its fall from political and intellectual pre-eminence. "Has Europe been lei Into the came enterprising but disastrous error? Will the African troops in France have a demoralising effect like that which the slaves carried into Italy during the decline of the Roman Empire? ' "The coloured taces are in a world majority of two to one. One-third of the world's Inhabitants rule eight-ninths of It. "But since 1000 European influence hae suffered extensive reductions in Asia and Africa. Unprecedented increase in the white race has been exceeded by. that ot the coloured people. That means, in a democratic age, an inevitable transfer or power. The former prestige of the white man has been undermined by his own beneficent rule. In war and peace his personal authority hae declined, since 1900. Fusion of Races. "When white enterprise has subdned the land, built railways, ana utilised the rivers, the coloured man will oust the white from all but the few posts that require experts." Of such possible settlements of the problem as amalgamation or segregation, sala Professor Gregory, complete racial fusion was often recommended by Improvements in stock and plants, and mankind might be expected to benefit by the same process. The great modern nations were of mixed origin, and their efficiency was *ne to capacities inherited from miscellaneous ancestors. "In North America the presence of the negro has Introduced problems of inscrutable perplexity; in South .America a mixed race is in firm possession; in Africa as a whole the white man hae no chance as a. colonist, and in South Africa bis future depends on some complex measure of segregation. "If absorption is rejected as It would make the United States a nation of octoroone, and if segregation be impracticable, what development is possible? "So measure appears available, but some solution may be reached by .a process of drift."