POPULATION PROBLEMS

Evening Star, Issue 19697, 26 October 1927, Page 5

POPULATION PROBLEMS

CUESTiOM OF MIGRATION PROFESSOR HUN LEY’S VIEWS. Press Association—By Telegraph- Copyright LONDON, October 23. (Received October 26, at 11.lu a.m.) Professor Julian Huxley, in an article in the ‘Evening Standard,’ entitled ‘ Are Wo Over-populated,’ examines the Geneva Population Conference, and emphasises tiio rapidity, biologically speaking, of the effects of even a small ratio increase. He states: “This lias an immediate bearing on he might bear Japan and Italy claiming the right that under-populated countries like the United States, and, still more, Canada and Australia, should open their doors instead of making ingress difficult or impossible; but if the barriers were removed tho spaces would he filled in fifty or 100 years instead of 200 or 300 years. Migrating countries would merely get rid of tho surplus and again become as overcrowded ns before. After Mr Thomas’s speech at Geneva 1. think that all people realised that the United States and Australia had tho same right to demand that those countries should lower their birth rates.” [Two hundred scientists, statesmen, economists, and Government officials were present at the opening of the first International World Population Conference on August 3f, which resulted in tho establishment of a permanent international organisation to study one of tho most important fundamental problems facing mankind, seeing that the size of the earth’s capacity to support human beings is limited, while the populations arc continually growing, creating social, economic, and political situations which arc threatening most profoundly to alter and possibly wreck tho present civilisation. Professor East (Harvard University) expressed the opinion that at the piesent rate of increase the earth’s population within a century would reach 5,000,000,000, which was the utmost the earth was capable of supporting. Ho advocated the immediate formation of an international union to establish a just ponce between peoples, founded on basic instincts, nutrition, and reproduction. Mr Albert Thomas (the League’s Labor Secretary) urged the international organisation to handle migration so as to avoid conflict. Jn connection therewith It was also necessary to settle whether people should have the right to reproduce beyond their own economic resources and whether they should have the right to conserve soil from which they were not producing the maximum.]