AN URGENT PROBLEM

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 290, 7 December 1937, Page 6

AN URGENT PROBLEM

NEED FOR MORE PEOPLE.

(To the Editor.)

>The leader in ike "Auckland Star" en Saturday and the article entitled "Dire Peril" on the subject of New Zealand's tmderpopulation and falling birth rate should help to arouse public opinion on this urgent problem. Together with a falling birth rate, New Zealand is applying the principles of socialisation. This is a red rag to the nation without land, raw material* and markets. For in so far as the socialisation of New Zealand creates truly national monopolies in the exports of that country, so the power of the Government and the national character of economic conflict becomes intensified. Thus the socialisation of New Zealand, even though the Government be most peaceably-minded, is likely to intensify the fears of other nations in proportion as the control of the Socialist Government over this country's economic life ie increased. A bureaucracy is the death of idiom. The Empire faces chaos and disintegration. Have we grown too spineless to face up to realities? For as the seed is sown eo shall these women who interfere with natural birth reap bitter fruit. If they deny themselves children in order to escape the burden of bringing them up, they will have to pay a very dear price later on for their misjudgment. For not only will they eee their country, which they cannot love, lie at the cruel feet of a conqueror, but they will be alone and unloved in the winter of their lives. One of the sweetest of all earthly blessings is the old homestead where the parente are living at their best, buoyant with good health and free from worry. When men secure money to be independent they bi?frin an era of "debilitating ease, and this influence laid the foundation of the fall of Rome through the imbecility and cowardice of its men who constituted the army. The women of the well-to-do classes muet become soldiers of Empire in a campaign where there is no intermission and no discharge. OLD-FASHIONED FATHER OF FOUR.