LESSONS FROM DEAD EMPIRES

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 14618, 11 March 1948, Page 5

LESSONS FROM DEAD EMPIRES

IMMIGRATION VITAL TO N.Z.

Feebleness Of Present Efforts

Revival Of Pioneer Spirit

Needed

Against the background of great empires now dead, the feebleness of the efforts towards giving New Zealand a lasting place in real history are coloured in brilliant futility in the matter of immigration, writes Sir Clutha Mackenzie in a letter from the St. Dunstan’s Hostel for the Indian War Blinded, Dehra Dun, to the Dominion Settlement and Population Association, Wellington. “Why can’t our short-sighted fellow-countrymen learn from the success of the U.S.A. that a growing population means work, wages, and prosperity, apart from strength and a first-class expectancy of long national life?” he asks.

Sir Clutha, who was blinded when serving with the Wellington Mounted Rifles in the first World War, has recently been preparing a report on blindness in India. Writing of a flight he made from Britain to India last year, he says: “The old York was a bit senile, and it was compelled to rest at unexpected places, luckily choosing good spots. An emergency landing dumped us down on the site of ancient Carthage for several days’ stay.

“I had never expected to visit those old ruins, but all I shall say now is that it is singularly stirring to wander over the sities of cities now dead, which, were great cities —luxurious and prosperous for a thousand yeai’s—capitals of great empires. Except to a few students of history, but one Carthaginian name, of all its millions, survives —that of Hannibal.

“Against such backgrounds, our own little affairs, our minute population, our brief occupancy of those islands, do assume their true perspective, and in this matter of immigration, colour in brilliant futility the feebleness of our efforts towards giving New Zealand a lasting place in real history. “Too Close a Witness” “My present situation here, as one of the thin, fast-dwindling British rearguard, is also apt to give rise to philosophising. Indeed, for the past year, I have been too close a witness of the fall of British power and the weakening of European influences —the edging us out of China, our surrender of Burma, the transfer of power to Ceylon, the handing over of India, and the pessimism which hangs over England. “How amazingly our own people and Press have condemned Britain’s part in Asia, not knowing the greatness of it, and the vast good it did. From here (Dehra Dun) to the Afghan border all is anarchy—looting, robbery, burning of villages, i-ape, abduction, and murder. “We still have one great resource —the British Dominions.. But, unless we get a move on—and that very quickly—we shall not even have that resource, e

“That is our start, that is what can revive the war-weary spirit of Britain, that is what can bring relief, lasting relief, to the sad, shattered people of Europe. Why can’t our short-sighted, fellow-country-men see it, or, at least, a sufficient number to carry it through? Why do they cling to the fallacy that migration means hardship and an overcrowded labour market? “This must be the banner to revive the old pioneer spirit, to rouse us from post-war lethargy, and to shake out of our minds those befuddling, short-term falsities with which Socialism has filled them.”