THE WHITE PERIL.

Evening Post, Volume LXXX, Issue 134, 3 December 1910, Page 13

THE WHITE PERIL.

A STRIKING POEM. A New .Zealand correspondent sends us a copy of the New Zealand Times containing a striking poem entitled "The White Peril," said a recent number of the Spectator. The writer, Mr. Edward TregeaT, takes for his text three passages from the Labour Reports of 1908, 1909, and 1910. The first notes a fall in the birth-rate from 41 per 1000 in 1876 to 27 per 1000 in 1906, with a decline in the daily attendance at the Duiiedm schools from 4148 in 1887 to 2882 in 1907 ; the second asserts that few children between five and fifteen years of age take the places of their elders as vacancies occur; and the third (1910) states that there are this year 1258 . fewer young people under twenty-one engaged in New Zealand industries than in th© previous year. Mr. Tregear dismisses ill hio opening stanzas the menace of battle, of Germany, or of Asia. Utter destruction cannot come from "the men of the Failing Broods"; and, why should the Asiatics "leap at our rifles' mouths who have only to crouch and wait" ?—? — "Peril is here! is here! Here in the Childless Land Life sits high in the ChaL of Fools, twisting her ropes of sand ; Here the lisping of babies and cooing of mothers cease ; Here the Man- and the Woman fail, and only the flocks increase. Axes may bite , in the forest, Science harness the streams, Railway and dock be builded — all in a Land of Dreams ! Sunk in spiritual torpor ye flout these words of the wiEe : 'Only to music of children's songs shall the walls of a Nation rise.' "