POPULATION PROBLEM.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 200, 14 July 1936, Page 6

POPULATION PROBLEM.

W hex dictators sink from prominence in European politics, the world will find time to consider the population problem which year by year is increasing in importance and pressing for solution. If one goes deeply into the matter it is found that Europe, and especially Western and OenI tral Europe, has found difficulty in supporting its population for the past 75 years and more. The great sweep of industrialism during the nineteenth century brought Europe to a high state of development; but even the remarkable progress in this direction was insufficient to maintain a rapidly increasing population, and people moved in large numbers to newer countries which, with great undeveloped natural resources, offered opportunities for a better economic and social life. Even as late as in the period 1911 to 1913 the average number of European emigrants was 1,300,0(JO per annum. The Great War held up emigration, but since the declaration of peace the overseas movement of European people has been only half as large as in the 1911-13 period. The decline may be attributed to several factors, notably the employment of hundreds of thousands of men in reconstruction work in France and Belgium, the development of unemployment insurance in Great Britain, altered forms of government in certain countries, and the creation of new States, each with national aspirations and a firmer hold on its people. Probably, too, the present generation has not the same pioneering and venturesome spirit which for centuries led its ancestors to seek fame and fortune in new lands. * The factors that have caused the falling off in emigration have brought Europe lace to face with the most serious problem of population in its history. Nearly ten years after the world resumed peaceful pursuits, and notwithstanding the loss ol man power during the war, a decline in the birth-rate, and considerable progress in the re-establish-ment of a stable economic structure,. Europe has fully 20,000,0 n more people and less work proportionately for its total population than in 1913. Of course, if the birth-rate continues to decline there may be some relief from the population pressure, but it must take a long time. before the population becomes stabilised, for the reason that the death-rate has also declined, though not so fast as the birth-rate. Hitler may be under the mistaken impression that he is an instrument in the hands of God to ruthlessly and speedily reduce the European population by making full use of the lethal weapons that he has feverishly accumulated. Another war in Europe would not merely reduce the population, but decimate vast and incalculable numbers of men, women, and children. An authority expresses the opinion that most of the. economic troubles that'exist to-day, even those that might bring on war, would disappear if there was a more equitable distribution of population, so that idle people would become productive in countries where undeveloped natural wealth is so abundant that many times the present number of workers could be employed to the benefit of the world as a whole.