IMMIGRATION.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19258, 13 March 1928, Page 5

IMMIGRATION.

—♦ THE IMPERIAL SCHEME. VIEWS OF SIR ROBERT HORNE. [THE PRESS Special Service] AUCKLAND, March 12. Immigration is a burning question in Great Britain as it is in New Zealand and the views of Sir Bobert Home, the British statesman who arrived by the Niagara on his return to England after a world tour studying Empire problems, were given a reporter.

"I am strongly of opinion," said Sir Robert, "that there is very little use in carrying out immigration schemes unless they have been well considered and carefully thought out beforehand. It is no use simply to send people out in spasmodic fashion and dump them down in a country where conditions arc entirely new and unfamiliar to them.

"We know of failures in New Zealand and Australia on account of this loose way of meeting the problem. In some cases the men arc quite unstated to the conditions, and in other crises conditions are unsuited to the men. On the other hand there have been many successes, but failures have tended to create deterrents to others to leave the Old Country for the overseas Dominions. Happily things are njiv bsing better arranged with the help or the Overseas Committee in London in harmony with the Governments of Dominions themselves. We are confidently looking forward to an increase of immigration in the future on sound lines. .

"I have personally the control of the fund for the promotion of immigration schemes on the best lines. The money is being largely devoted to the training of boys, and they are given instruction in milking, the care of horses, the rearing of poultry, and pigs and farm operations generally in order that they may be fitted for life overseas. The benefit of sending out youths is quite apparent; they respond much more readily to the new conditions and. they take much more rapidly to their new homes than elder men. Of course, there are many older people who have done well in the Dominions, and there is no reason whatever to be pessimistic about such men making good. "The condition of unemployment at the present time in Australia and New Zealand has closed the way to immigration to some extent, but in these new countries it is plain that unemployment is a mere passing phase. It is impossible to suppose that countries with great natural resources, such as Australia and New Zealand ' possess, are not going to be built up and afford employment to a far greater population than they have now. I am not inclined to look upon these temporary conditions of unemployment as any deterrent to carrying out of sound schemes for increasing the number of citizens who will be able to live happily under the beneficent conditions of these Southern Seas."