GROUP SETTLEMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 92, 16 October 1934, Page 7

GROUP SETTLEMENT

AN ADVERSE REPORT

MIGRATION POLICY

"RIGHT LINE OF APPROACH"

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, September 7. The political correspondent of the "Morning Post" remarks: An outspoken denunciation of all schemes for group settlement of the Empire through public corporations or chartered corporations is the principal feature of the report of the InterDepartmental Committee on Migration Policy. A considerable section of the report is devoted to a disparagement of the system of group migration to undeveloped territories in the Dominions, which has been strongly advocated recently both in Parliament and elsewhere. This is likely to causa considerable controversy. The "Morning Post," in a leading article, says: The Dominions are admittedly, tor the moment, beset with the same troubles which afflict the rest of the world. But they possess vast untapped resources, awaiting the , manpower to develop them. If these resources cannot be utilised for want of markets, the Dominions are destined to remain statib, and migrants are superfluous. But it is surely a hopelessly defeatist attitude which envisages such a future for our overseas Empire. A migration policy worthy the name must be founded on the assumption that the Dominions are capable of a gradual but indefinite expansion. Audit must derive urgency from the reflection that, if people of British stock thrink from undertaking that expansion, people of other stock will sooner or later; do it for them. If and when that happened we should have to write finis to the Empire. The report of the InterDepartmental Committee will scarcely, we fear, help to delay the menace of so unpleasant an eventuality. SPONTANEOUS MIGRATION. , ) "The Times" says: The general tone of the Report, however, is negative. The • committee is convinced —and gives reasons for its conviction—that the really valuable migration is the spontaneous movement of people who see an opportunity to better their own circumstances or those of their children, that this movement • will revive as economic conditions improve in the Dominions, and that in. the meantime no organised transfer of population will be of much use. Th» right line of approach, it says, is not to endeavour to transport men and women to the Dominions'regardless of economic conditions and of the possibility of marketing their produce, but to do everything possible to help to create the conditions in. the Dominions which provoked in the past, and will provoke in the future, a flow of spontaneous migration, "and then to see that every obstacle which lies in the way of such migration is removed and that every facility which can increase it is provoked." The report contrasts the spectacular appeal of the two methods, but contends that in effectiveness the advantage is all on.'the side of the less spectacular. ... For reasons given, and given very convincingly (continues "The Times"), the report regards it as out _of the question to encourage any considerable scheme of migration at the present time. It recognises the wisdom meanwhile of considering the lines along which migration, as it revives, should be directed, and the means .by.,which it can be assisted most effectively. It makes a numbar of useful suggestions to this end. If the facts it assembles and the deductions it draws from them are depressing to the advocates of short cuts and of spectacular schemes for redressing the balance of the Empire, even the enthusiast will admit that it sets out with admirable clear- ■ ness of reasoning aspects of the migration problem which cannot be ignored in any serious discussion. The "Daily Express" says: Their report, in ninety-three pages, encourages nothing and discourages much. All their efforts can be summed up in these words: we must wait for times to mend. They shut their eyes altogether to the possibility of development in the Crown Colonies. These vast and> rich -territories, governed from Whitehall, capable of producing so much that we cannot produce, should afford a fine opportunity for a band of adventurous colonists.