New Zealand Needs More Babies

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 123, 26 May 1937, Page 6

New Zealand Needs More Babies

JUDGE URGES INCREASED BIRTHRATE Per Press Association. AUCKLAND, May 25. The urgent need for an increased birth-rate in New Zealand, and the importance of filling tho Dominion with Britons before some other nation filled it with other people, were emphasised by Mr. Justice Callon president of the Auckland branch of the Royal Empire Society, who presided at tho Empire Day dinner to-night. His comments were made in the course of proposing the toast of the Empire and New Zealand. Originally the toast he had been asked to propose was that of New Zealand and the Empire, but ho considered that since the Dominion was really part of the Empire body, the order should be reversed. That entitled him to ask whether New Zealand was as healthy as it ought to or as it could be “ l speak subject to correction by expel Is, but I myself have" always understood that in any living organism, the requisite of good health is that there should be a constant renewal of life,” ho said. “That I believe to be the law uf Nature. Now it has recently been is-serted that wo are, in some measure, in rebellion against that law of Nature. If that be true, and to some extent it Is true, New Zealand is not in good health, but is in bad health. Upon such a, topic, in such a place, obviously I nin say no more, but having been charged with proposing the health ol' New Zealand, at this juncture, I do not think I can say less. I think it would be both cowardly and hypocritical to fo so. I hope, and I hope earnestly, :kat in tho near future, as a sign of recovered health, there may speedily appear and be steadily maintained, a distinct increase in the flow of tho □est immigrants into New Zealand. For New Zealand, the best immigrants are aaiive born New Zealanders. There wus another law of Nature ,hat jnight be remembered, and it was ;hat Nature abhorred a vacuum. At a ifc-ter stage of his address lie said; “If will not fill this country with Britons, it is cortain that, sooner or later, someone will fill it with some Jther kind of people, and that will be anything but nleaisa-nt. ’ f