MIGRATION

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 46, 23 August 1926, Page 8

MIGRATION

COMMISSIONER LAMB ON HIS TOUR BIG EFFORT AND BIG EXPENDITURE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, 2nd July. Commissioner D. C. Lamb, of the Salva-. tion Army, in' the first of two articles written for the "Morning Post," gives his impressions of a recent tour round the Empire, written from the migration point of view. His travels embraced Canada, New Zealand,' Australia, South Africa, and South Rhodesia, "countries still underpopulated, the potential homes of millions more of our people than are at present settled there."

The impression that remains uppermost in his mind is tlie painful one that "with congestion in our industrial areas at Home and under-population in the overseas Dominions, s we have the elements of a situation of the gravest danger to the future of the British Empire. These twin evils can be overcome if they are tackled together as the two sides of a single problem. If the Empire is to be preserved to coming generations of Britons there must be an immediate, substantial, and continuous increase in the numbers of emigrants from the Homeland."

Although the tour was undertaken primarily at the request of General Booth on behalf of the migration and settlement department of the Salvation Army, the experiences gained and the data gathered are essentially of Imperial and public rather than of exclusively sectional interest.

Commissioner Lamb says lie has spent a score of years in almost daily conflict with the problems of emigration and immigration as revealed in the work of ■ Salvation Army in arranging the transplantation of 150,000 men, women, and children; and it appears to-day that never were those problems more acute nor the need for the immediate speeding up of the whole machinery more pressing. . During this long journey, accompanied by his wife —a keen and shrewd observer and experienced social worker—it was possible to carry out a really far-reaching investigation on the spot, to meet, on their own soil, the people who are in charge of the machinery at what may be called the receiving end, to study the life and the conditions in their new surroundings of those who have emigrated, and in private discussions and public meetings to absorb local atmosphere and test local tendencies of mind. THE LONG VIEW ESSENTIAL. "From those experiences one gathers/ he writes, "that each of these four corners of the Empire has its own peculiar problems in the matter of immigration, problems made complex by political cross-cur-rents, by racial differences, by difficulties which arise where there is a mixed population; and yet that there are illimitable spacos to which our overflowing Homeland population could be transplanted. The long view in matters of emigration is essential. Throughout the tour it was found, without exception, that the Empire ivas still the great touchstone of Dominion life, that every reference in public and in private to Empire problems was received with the warmest sympathy. "It is the writer's belief that New Zealand is ready for schemes of development designed to call for an increased number of immigrants from Home, but mucL yet remains to be done. In Australia the same policy was followed as in Canada and New Zealand. One has felt for long that the present continued grave state of unemployment in Great Britain is a challenge to the solidarity of organised labour, and that belief, expressed over and again in the Commonwealth, where in most States Labour is in power, found ready attention, particularly in its app' ition to the main problem in hand. What most swiftly caught the imagination was the Group Settlement Scheme in Western Australia. It has frequently been described, and I would only say that in all the tour I saw nothing more interesting or important to the Empire than this Great Endeavour.

"The immigration problem in the Union of South Africa and Rhodesia has almost nothing in common with that of the other Dominons. The question here is inseparable from the colour and racial questions. The native races are increasing .steadily. 3lore and still more of their representatives are moving southwards from the interior, learning Western methods, adopting Western manners. The native and coloured populations now outnumber the white by about six to one and a-half. They are spreading all over the Dominion; and, although it may sound unduly pessimistic, one is moved to wonder if the time is coming when the white population, unondurably outnumbered in the central districts, will move little by littb until it is. found only in districts lj-inc; close to, say, WaIGA Bay, Capetown, Port Elizabeth, East. London, and Durban. CONSIDERABLE EXPENDITURE NECESSARY. "Ik (here any reason why these gloomy forebodings should ever bo realised ? We of the .Salvation Army do not believe it. The white races will continue to lead if they prove themselves worthy and capable of loading,, but surely not otherwise. The white population cannot bo maintained either m South Africa or Austrail. by arms alone. But its problems can be solved by numbers. Why should money lavishly spent in the unproductive and unsound dole not be invested in a great productive and economic project? Immigration on a scale big enough to cope with dangers, threatening our Imperial prestige will never be secured for a small outlay. If the spending is done now, the profit is bound to accrue at last. It will not be seen in five nor perhaps in ten'years, but in fifty it will be ours, and then the effort and the expenditure will be considered to have been worth while." . 85, Fleet street.