BRITISH PROBLEM

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 105, 30 October 1935, Page 3

BRITISH PROBLEM

EMPIEE SETTLEMENT

VIEWS IN ENGLAND .

EXAMPLE OF PALESTINE

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, October 5.

Correspondence on the subject of migration continues in the columns o£ "The Times." The High Commissioner of Southern Rhodesia follows Mr. Forbes, quoting the words .of Southern Rhodesia's Prime Minister: "What is the good of men leaving Britain for the Dominions only to produce things they cannot sell?" Mr. A. A. Somerville, M.P., asks: "Are we to be the rustic waiting for the river to roll by before crossing? Why should we not say to the Dominions: "Our needs are complementary; let us get together and work together continuously and with foresight to develop the Imperial estates; we will provide most of the credit and most of the man-power,' 1 of which we have great store now idle; you can provide the opportunities?'". . Mr. Somerville points out that more than seven years ago he moved a Bill for the amendment of the 1922 Empire Settlement Act, which received a second reading without a division after five hours''debate, but failed to receive Parliamentary time for further stages. It contained,the provision:— The Secretary of State shall appoint a board of five persons to be described as the Empire Settlement Board, and it shall'be the duty of such board to carry out, under his control, the provisions ofvthis Act. The first requisite of a new migration policy, he maintains, is a development board of .our ablest men to work in co-operation with their opposite numbers in the Dominions. SELF-CONTAINED GROUPS. Another correspondent points out that the first principle in healthy natural migration has always been the capacity of enterprising individual, or communities of emigrants to support and establish themselves and live on the country. Outlets for products are quite secondary—but they always come in due course and constitute a bonus to successful endeavour. "Witness Palestine," says the writer, "which is the most prosperous country in the world today. The British Empire is holding idle, or just playing with, at least a dozen Palestines in its African territories; in. Northern. Australia, in Newfoundland, Canada^ Central America, etc. There are no adverse conditions in any of these areas that modern technical enterprise cannot profitably.:-surmount and.produce as a result highly improved and valuable populated provinces. : "At no time in the world's history has the opportunity for organised migration been so favourable nor its need greater.',' : Again, a correspondent who has spent 20 years in the backblocks of one of the Dominions, asks: "Would it not be good if some of those unable to get work here could produce in the Dominions even some of the things 'they require themselves, which, under present conditions here, they cannot? Again, would not the money they now receive as unemployment: pay go further if used there as a means to supply them with things absolutely needed that they were unable to produce themselves?" The writer suggests that a self-sup-porting life in- the' backblocks might appeal to people who have really suffered from the' effect of unemployment. . ■ Still another correspondent asserts that the day has gone when the common interests, of a great community of nations could' be regulated by. a conference of Prime Ministers meeting at long and uncertain intervals. It is of vital importance that some kind of inter-Imperial machinery should be created which would make possible a form of consultation between the Governments of Great Britain and the Do-, minions that would be intimate, continuous, and comprehensive. "It is only by means of a courageous and far-sighted policy of Empire development that the economic conditions will be created which will make possible migration on a large scale to the Dominions. One of these conditions must obviously be that a profitable market should' be guaranteed for the surplus produce of new settlers."