'MOST VULNERABLE'

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 238, 8 October 1936, Page 17

'MOST VULNERABLE'

NEW ZEALAND TO-DAY

ENGLISHMAN'S SURVEY.

CHILD IMMIGRANTS NEEDED.

I "I would advise no one with a com- ! petenee in Great Britain to emigrate to New Zealand at the present time, for the simple reason that I believe New Zealand to be one of the most vulnerable countries, internally and externallv, in the world," says Mr. Donald Cowie, in an article "New Zealand: A Warning," in the September number of "The Nineteenth Century and After." Mr. Cowie, who has lived in New Zealand, and recently returned to England, summarises candidly the Dominion's advantages and disadvantages, as he sees them, and remarks that inc very fact that the Dominion needs more population makes it, temporarily, "a very good place to live in." Overseas tourists, he says, are surprised at the high standard of living in New Zealand, and surprised that New Zealanders seem to be unaware of their own prosperity. "An Economic Annexe." A glaring defect in the Dominion's policy is "her complete economic and political reliance upon a small group of islands at the other side of the world that have their own serious economic and political problems. What Throginorton Street and Whitehall - think today New Zealand, 11,000 ;ni!es distant, has to suffer to-morrow. When somebody said recently that New Zealand was j no more than an economic annexe of the United Kingdom he was not playing with words. In 1935 Great Britain absorbed over 84 per cent of the exports of New Zealand. If,< for any reason, New Zealand's market in Great Britain were to be curtailed, the Dominion would faoe bankruptcy. She would not be able to find another market, and her scanty population, already large eaters, would scarcely be able to absorb the tremendous surplus of produce that would rapidly accrue. "One cannot avoid the conclusion that New Zealand's wealth and prosperity are built upon a very insecure foundation. Should Great Britain be engaged in war elsewhere, this Dominion, almost completely unprotected, would fall an easy prey to such a neighbour as Japan, whose imperial aims have yet to be satisfied. In any case, New Zealand could neither afford nor man adequate defence herself."

Need of Population. "If I have made some sensational statements and have seemed to attach undue importance both to New Zealand and to certain aspects of her polity and economy, it is only because I am anxious for the future of the British Commonwen Ith as a whole, and particularly afraid for the weakest member. My arguments, lined up, both warn tl:ej intending immigrant to the country and stress the necessity of more, immigration. I would advise no one with a competence in Great Britain to emigrate to New Zealand at the present time, for the simple reason that I believe New Zealand to be one of the most vulnerable countries, externally and inter-;, nally, in the world. But I would strongly advise New Zealand and Great Britain co-operatively to find a speedy means of increasing the population of the Dominion. A chain is as strong as its weakest link, and man-power is the only safeguard against a disastrous future. "It would be all right if New Zealanders could do the job themselves. But they can't." Here Mr. Cowie quotes population statistics, and goes on to say: "This tendency for the New Zealander, like Rip Van Winkle, to grow older without knowing it is exceedingly serious, and, if not checked, may have far-reaching results. As the bulk of New Zealanders grow older and increasing numbers advance beyond the reproduction age, there will be fewer and fewer children. If the present tendency continues, the race of New Zealanders will di# out within a few hundred years. "Fallacies." "New Zealanders must realise that they cannot have their cake and eat it. Among the fallacies they entertain out there is that of the wages fund, which, some people may remember, maintains there are only a certain number of jobs to go round in any community, and an increase of the population naturally creates unemployment. And another bugbear out there to-day is the belief that New Zealand's sole destiny is to produce primary exports, and, the present niarket for these commodities being glutted, it would be fatal to increase the ranks of the producers. "Yet it seems patently obvious that the Dominion can never hope to attain the smallest measure of economic and political self-sufficiency so long as its population is inadequate to man defences and provide a profitable subsidiary market for New Zealand's produce within New Zealand. The wages fund fallacy is easily refuted. Immigrants take in each other's washing, and yet have surplus requirements that provide additional employment for the natives. If the wages fund theory were not a fallacy, New Zealand would still be an empty land to-day. As for the theory of reliance upon primary exports—well, the natural alternative is the creation of a home market for produce and manufactures, which demands first and foremostly an increased population." "Old Order Nearly Ended." Mr. Cowie expresses the opinion that migration must be resumed. New Zealand can only look to child migrants — the Fairbrklge experiment in Australia has proved the value of this class—and to foreign migrants, notably northern Europeans, for the population transfusions of the future that will make them severally impregnable and the Commonwealth as a whole compact against the world. "I have felt," he concludes, "that by quoting the case of New Zealand I could most easily make it clear that the British Commonwealth, as at present constituted, is the most vulnerable empire or association of States that history has known. At present, I have felt, we are living in a fools' paradise, from which we are very likely to emerge with an unpleasant thud. ' The old order changeth,' and the old order, I have felt, is very near the end. The present policy of the British Government with relation to Imperial affairs is a policy inherited from the past. That policy must be changed to suit a world that is vastly different from the world of laissez-faire and ' Rule Britannia.' "