OVERSEAS SETTLEMENT

Evening Star, Issue 18332, 20 July 1923, Page 6

OVERSEAS SETTLEMENT

CASE OF EX-SERVICED.

EMPIRE SERVICE LEAGUE’S RECOMMENDATION.

Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright.

LONDON, July 18.

At tho Empire Service League Conference General Sir Andrew Russell presented the report of the Sub-committee on Emigration, which stated that about j 300,0D0 ex-servicomcn in England wore I out of work, and a considerable number who were over thirty were also without prospects of exnploj%nent in Hie near future. It was considered that many who were at present unfit could become efficient by a system of training in camps in England. The report recommended tho conference to approve of regulated emigration and land settlement within the Empire, and to pledge members to assist the schemes. It also recommended the Imperial Government to make arrangements that would enable the grand president of tho league to meet tho dominion attending the forthcoming Imperial Conference and communicate to them tho conclusions of the conference. On tho motion of Sir Andrew Russell, seconded by the Australian- delegate, the report was adopted.—A. and N.Z. Cable. GREAT BRITAIN LAGGING. LONDON, July 19. Tho ‘Morning Post,” in commenting on a speech by Mr A. Buckley (Parliamentary Secretary to tho Department of Overseas Trade), says that among the dominions Australia loads in organised interimperial migration, while Britain lags behind hi the business of overseas settlement. This side should bo entrusted to one man, whoso duty it would bo to divide tho country into regions, and to provide recruiting and training centres, equipment depots, and transport and shipping. The ‘ Morning Post ’ suggests that Britain should prepare a complete scheme, far submission to tho Imperial Conference.—A. and N.Z. Cable. VALUE OF STATE AID. LONDON, July 19. (Received July 20, at 8.50 a.m.) Mr A. Buckley (Parliamentary Secretary to tho Board of Trade), at the Empire Service League's Conference, emphasised the value of State aid in connection with migration to Australia and Now Zealand. Ho said he wished more had' been done with Canada.—A. and N.Z. Cable.

Mr L. S. Amery, writing in the ‘ United Empire’ for April, says that tho migration of workers from tho Home Country to tho dominions and colonics will not merely reduce immediate unemployment, but also create new markets oversea’s, and that the more settlers Britain sends out to tho dominions the larger in tho long run will be the population of Britain itsolL

Ho _ also controverts tho individualistic view in tho following paragraph:—“ There is another school of thought which, while believing in the advantages of a better distribution of tho population of tho Empire, is alarmed at the idea of any Government action in tho matter. Those who hold this view’ appear to bo under the impression that the Empire has grown simply by the individual movement of our people to new and fertile lands, and that nothing more is wanted than to let the natural impulse for migration assert itself unhampered by State control. T am afraid this theory is directly contrary to the actual facts of history. Every British colony and dominion has sprung from an organised scheme of settlement. That is true of tho original British colonies which now’ form tho United States. It in even more trim of tho dominions, every one of which owes its existence as a British nation to-day to a State-organised scheme of settlement. British Canada was built on the foundation of the forty thousand United Empire Loyalists whom the British Government planted in Ontario and Nova Scotia .alter tho .American Revolution. The nucleus of Emrlish-spcaking South Africa was tho 1820 settlement of veterans of the Napoleonic War on tho Kaffir border. Australia and New Zealand owe their first development to the deliberate policy of Stateaided organised migration and settlement, which was forced upon the Government hero by the terrible economic reaction after 1815, and which was sustained' for a generation. It was pursued for an immediate object, which, in tho language of tho time (as true in substance to-day as then), was to secure that ‘ tho redundant labor and the curse of tho Mother Country might become tho active labor and' tho blessing of tho colonics.’ But it was also pursued by the statesmen and the philanthropists of tho time, like Wakefield, with a deeprooted faith in the future Imperial destiny of these infant settlements —a faith which our own day has so gloriously vindicated.” In a conference in February Britain and tho dominions agreed to a comprehensive scheme of migration and settlement, and it was concluded that the direct settlement of men on tho land ns primary producers was the key to the whole problem. Tho migration of women is a scarcely loss important problem, and the Overseas Settlement Committee should have tho co-opera-tion of voluntary, unofficial organisations.