EMPIRE MIGRATION

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 10, 7 October 1936, Page 11

EMPIRE MIGRATION

British Problem Seen In New Light

FALLING BIRTH-RATE

May Soon Be No Surplus Population

By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright.

(Received October 6, 10.40 p.m.)

London. October 6. The “Morning Post,” in a leader on migration, says:— “Hitherto it has been customary to speak of the necessity for filling the Dominions’ empty spaces from our own surplus, but the moment is approaching when the Empire will be compelled to review the whole problem in a newlight, because in a very few years, so far from having a surplus, we shall ourselves be suffering a decline in population. “Can Britain therefore afford to suffer an additional diminution through migration lest her man-power resources become dangerously weak? In other words, ought we to encourage renewed migration until our birth-rate snows a sustained and substantial riser You can fill up the Empire only out of a continuing surplus, and now that no surplus is being produced either in Britain or the Dominions, the problem has begun to wear an entirely different aspect. “Clearly the solution is more babies, and that subject ought to engage the anxious attention of any future Im perial Conference.”