EMPIRE MIGRATION.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 258, 28 September 1935, Page 9

EMPIRE MIGRATION.

SCOPE IN DOMINION. IMPERIAL NECESSITY TO ACT. LONDON, Sept. 27. Commenting on the Newcastle conference on migration, the Times, in a loader, says: “Thoughtful people cannot be blind to the warnings implicit for Empire countries. In the present trends of population and certain causes of international tension there is a stronger case now than before 1929 for facilitating tho redistribution of population in tho interests of general security, although it need not be a counterpart of the loose notions regarding empty areas in the Dominions, but rather the necessity for expanding population in certain Dominions sufficiently to carry the overhead costs of sponsible international status.” The leader draws attention to Rt. Hon. G. W. Forbes’s statements and points out that before considerable migration is possible it is essential to ensure favourable economic conditions.

The Morning Post says: “Mr Forbes’s migration attitude is thoroughly intelligible as far as it goes. There is no virtue -in merely planting on the Dominions people for whom there is no prospective opportunity oi earning a livelihood, but it is reasonable to suggest that an empty Dominion ought to be reviewing its economic structure and endeavouring to discover what new migrants might produce. “Mr Forbes rightly says ‘our first duty is to our own people,’ but it should also be part of that duty to consider how the fact of 1,500,000 people inhabiting a country capable of holding at least 10 times as many is to escape criticism in a non-British world clamouring for more land to colonise. Migration into New Zealand is an Imperial necessity of the first order, but as long as New Zealand relies predominantly on the production of a few staple exports her opportunity for expansion is likely to remain strictly limited. Opportunities to work for an expanded population must be sought in directions hitherto unexplored. A search for such opportunities is a matter of concern not only to New Zealand and other depopulated Dominions, but above all to Britain, who still hears the mam burden of their defence.”