ASIATIC PEOPLES.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 261, 4 November 1929, Page 19

ASIATIC PEOPLES.

SURPLUS POPULATION. OUTLET IN SIBERIA. ENGLISHMAN'S OPINION. Asiatics are not anxious for entanglement with Great Britain and repudiate the idea that they have eyes on the Pacific as an outlet for their surplus population. Statements to this effect were made by Mr. Maurice Gregory, a prominent English Quaker, who arrived in Auckland by the Rangitiki. He will remain eighteen months in the Dominion, and spend some time with his brother, Mr. Alfred Gregory, of Dargaville. He has interested himself in philanthropy and social progress in all parts of the world for over 40 years, and was a member of the Bishop of London's Morality Council. Vital statistics com-

piled , by him in connection with -work for the abolition of the State regulation of vicewere accepted by the League of Nations... ■, ' ■ : A member of the Society of Friends, London, Mr. Gregory was invited to visit Japan in 1911 to influence public opinion and the Japanese Government against the re-establishment of the Yoshiwara, the "red light" district of Tokio. He succeeded in having important reforms cai-ried. " . Vastness of Siberia. '■-'•'One cannot help but be tr'enieiiddusly interested in the. development of the world," said Mr. Gregory. "It is an extremely sparsely populated place. The great north-west of America, where there are vast new wheat lands, have been absorbing hundreds of thousands of immigrants, but it is only oue-sixth the

_— —— ( I size of Eastern Siberia. There, there is rich agricultural land and not one human being to the square mile. Eastern Siberia is the natural place to accommodate the surplus population of China and Japan, which have no thoughts about Australia and New Zealand." Mr. Gregory argued that, in Eastern Siberia, there was plenty of room for the exploitation of good land by both the Russians and Asiatics, the areas nearest to the Russian centres of population by the Russians, and those adjacent to the boundaries of China and Japan by the peoples of the latter countries. The land could be developed on the co-operative system, but not by force, as practised by the Soviet. The ( latter policy was doomed to failure. It J seemed to Mr. Gregory that it was only j justice that' the Chinese and Japanese I should be allowed to expand in the direction indicated, as, after all, political boundaries were "only fancy things." A wonderful country awaited development and its progress was being hampered by a-dog-in-the-manger attitude. The Opium Traffic. Mr. Gregory was associated in the movement to bring about the abolition of the Government's share in the opium ( traffic between India and the East in the 'nineties. He also directed attention to the famine problem in India, and it was partly as the result of his work that the Indian Government built the network of "famine railways," which enabled food to be rushed at a moment's notice to the centres of distress. When he first visited India 48 years ago, it * was not uncommon for upwards of , 2,000,000 people to die in times of j famine. A short time ago, when an- , other famine threatened, the chief of j , the Famine Department announced his E confidence of being able not only to pre- j vent a single death, but to obviate even emaciation. . j ' Mr. Gregory will be the guest of the * Rotary Club on Monday week, when he * will speak on the "New Outlook in Cen- r tral Africa." . )