SETTLERS FROM INDIA

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 November 1944, Page 3

SETTLERS FROM INDIA

N.Z. INDIFFERENCE ALLEGED

WELLINGTON, October 31.

“I am afraid I have to tell a thousand or more men who wrote to me in India and their 4000 dependents, that our Government has made no proposals to welcome them as settlers in this Dominion. It is a major tragedy,” writes Major Sir Clutha MacKenzie, in a letter to the chairman of the Dominion Settlement and Population Association, Mr. Leigh Hunt. Sir C. MacKenzie, now on leave from In-, dia in Auckland, had previously reported the keen desire among British men serving in the armed forces in India, Burma and Middle East to make homes in New Zealand. In addition he' had reported that there was a large group of older men with ample income who wanted to retire in New Zealand. He says he has given Mr. Fraser and others solid facts about the magnificent group of th e e best men of Britain with wives, children, enthusiasm and money, whom New Zealand might have for the asking, if New Zealand would only give them a welcome and organise their arrival. After what he had come to know of Asia he had given his views on what must be the indefensible position of New Zealand in face of the enormous population pressures that part of the world was bound to exert in an ever increasing tempo, indefensible whether in war or before the proposed world court of arbitration. “We are unanimous we must have no more wars. To get rid of war we must get rid of its causes. No single factor will do more to get us into future trouble than the emptiness of our country, and world opinion will have little sympathy with us. Short-sight-edness and selfishness will bring our white man’s paradise to an early end; we shall be turned out of our little Garden of Eden.’’