POPULATION

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 115, 16 May 1936, Page 10

POPULATION

FIRST LINE OF DEFENCE

AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, April 8. To the "Glasgow Herald" the Very Rev. John White, C.H., D.D., gives his impressions of Australia, referring to the danger of empty spaces. The r-pulation in Western Australia is less than 500,000. There is an area of nearly 1,000,000 square miles, \vhich gives two square miles to every person. In Great Britain and the North of Ireland there are 468 persons to the square mile. . ■ He comments: "We must not, however, be misled by these figures; one only requires to stay a few months in Australia to discover that many of the great spaces are empty because they are not capable of economic settlement. There is, of course, room for a much larger population in the par-tially-settled regions in the agricultural belt. If one takes the density of' population as it is in the United States of America, there is space— " apart from desert places—for nearly c 20,000,000; and if the condition of 'saturation' of Europe be considered [ permissible, then 80,000,000 might be ' accommodated. 1 ' "A former Governor-General of New \ Zealand, Viscount Bledisloe, said late- ( ly that it was difficult to see how that - Dominion was going to maintain its economic existence with no more-than 1,500,000 inhabitants and with immense \ areas of potentially fertile but unde- ■ veloped land and mineral resources \ which the world needs and which so far are almost wholly untapped. ' Lord Bledisloe might have added that it was not only its economic existence but also its political existence that was jeopardised through lack of population. This was made clear lately when a Navy League deputation waited on Mr. Savage, and urged that the Dominion should take a greater share in Empire naval defence- and train ' yachtsmen as auxiliaries. The Prime ■ Minister replied that the first line of ■ defence was population, and their only ■ claim to territory was that it was not allowed to remain empty and.unused."