THE GREAT DANGER.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 8 December 1913, Page 2

THE GREAT DANGER.

'•There is one regret always with me," said Sir George Reid in a speech at Sydney, "and that is that the tastes for the pursuits of ; the town seem to be so rapidly increasing, and the tastes for the industries of the soil don't seem to advance with the same rapidity. There is no country in the world where Nature works harder and better for the community than in Australial- If Nature didn't do so much for us it would be impossible to maintain this enormous population of the capital cities —I mean enormous population in relation to the people settled over the vast spaces of the interior. If this were a poorer country from some points of view it might be better for us. The great danger ahead-of Australia, to-' my mind, is the fact that everyone who can seems to get to the big cities on the coast. I always feel that the big towns can take care of themselves. It is the scattered populations of the interior that seem to me to deserve the best care and the greatest attention; and they are the springs from which the prosperity of the cities comes. Therefore, in the course of my duties in London, I never throw out any sort of encouragement to men who wish to settle in the cities of f^alm, though, of course, I don't tell them not to come."