SETTLEMENT ABROAD

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 126, 30 May 1928, Page 9

SETTLEMENT ABROAD

A BOLD PROPOSAL ; HUGE -EMPIRE LOAN (From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 2nd March. A contributor to the "Morning Post", signing himself A. E. Canning, outlines ,a bold scheme for peopling the -Empire. After referring to what has been done in the way of migration during tho past few years, he asks: "Is this statesmanship? la there a ghost of a hope in these small but praiseworthy measures?" , Continuing, he says: "A groat effort was made in 1923, when three million a year was voted for emigration schemes —not a quarter of which has been called ;upqn. Why should this seemingly bold and generous vote have failed? The reason is obvious. "This three, million a year should have been used as interest-on a largo capital loan to be divided among the Dominions, according ,to their needs, for the purpose of preparing land for settlement. Now, three million divided among the . Dominions e'ffccts nothing, but' three million a year used- as interest on a largo Empiro loan would get at tho very root of our troubles. I therefore propose a first Empire Joan of one hundred million. FIFTY-FIFTY PKINOIPLE. "A collossal development of our Dominions is needed with their collaboration and under their control, and with money lent to them at 2J per cent., the particular Dominions concerned paying tho other 2i per cent., plus the chargo for a sinking fund, the fifty-fifty principle being carried out in all details except only tho Dominion administration of the work. "Tho Labour Party in' Canada or Aus.tralia may point to their unemployed and to their own manufactured steel and other constructional works', but both these will bo helped by the. fiftyfifty arrangement, for in each case they must profit by increased work. "The money from this loan must be used solely for opening up new regions, by railways, irrigation, roads, bridges, necessary towns, farm buildings, and produce centres. ' "Turning now to the class of emigrant, it is true that agriculture and its allied pursuits arc the real objective in tho settlement of tho colonies, but if largo tracts of land for agrictilturo and other developments arc mapped out, then labourers and artisans of every typo' aro all wanted to reach and to develop those areas, and after a year in tho country the environment will have fitted them to qualify for ownership and laud work long before their building' and other work is finished; A certain amount of prior selection would, of course, bo necessary. "As to any reluctance of our people to leave England, the dole is largely to blame, but is not irremediable. The inducement to emigrate must bo made plainer. In these days of broadcasting I rofuso to beliove -that if an offer of work wore made for,.say, 500 brick.layers and a like number o± v other trades as' a first contingent, tho response would fail. STATESMANSHIP AND COURAGE. "If after the war there had been a really great Empire loan of fivo hundred million on these lines, tho cost ' > England would only have been twelve and a half million, or 3d in tho £ charged through the income tax. Had such a policy been adopted with a comprehensive fifty-fifty arrangement, tho picture of England and of tlio Do- ■ minions to-day would have been very different from that now presented. "Tho illimitable resources of the Empire aro not doubted, but all that is done is to wait for normal development. Now tho war was abnormal, unemployment; doles, taxes, and rates are all abnormal, and tho measures to be taken must also bo abnormal. And yet there is nothing abnormal in an Empiro 'lonn, rather it calls for a wise statesmanship and very ordinary courage. "It is the statesmen of to-day, both at lfrjine and in tho Dominion's, wlio will have great things said of tin-in by historians, or they will bo dismissed with a few linos." ' •