CHANCE TO INCREASE POPULATION

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 232, 26 June 1940, Page 10

CHANCE TO INCREASE POPULATION

Orphan Children As Evacuees COUNTER TO DECLINING BIRTHRATE Not children with parents and relatives in Britain, to whom they would return after the war, but orphan children who would remain to grow u.p permanent citizens of this Dominion, should be evacuated to New Zealand from England, is the opinion of Mr. A. Leigh Hunt, who expressed these views in an address to the Wellington branch of the League of Nations Union yesterday. The original idea seemed to have gone astray, he said. It did not seem practical or reasonable to bring children all this way, just for a year or so. when Canada had already offered to take as many as required. Why, he asked, had not the Government made a counter-suggestion that orphan children be sent. There were in New Zealand thousands of families willing to adopt these children. But instead of taking to their hearts orphans who would remain witli them permanently, they were going to learn to love these others, who would -then be taken away and sent back to their homes again—perhaps into the slums of the Old Country. To him as a business man the scheme did not seem reasonable. There was no more urgent question than that of populating this country, else we would have no right to bold it. New Zealand’s birthrate was declining. Today 24 per cent, of marriages were childless, and there were very high percentages with only one or two children. In a few years the Now Zealand population would become stationary; after that it would begin to decrease. Sixty years hence it would be back to the population of 1850. unless measures were taken to remedy the situation. Here was an opportunity of bringing in child immigrants; the question of adult migration could be considered after the war. He had written to the Prime Minister about the scheme to bring out orphan children, and he had received many letters from all over the country supporting it. He suggested that it might offer scope for the many organizations anxious to be doing something more vital than they were at present.