THE NEED FOR IMMIGRATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15496, 1 January 1914, Page 6

THE NEED FOR IMMIGRATION.

The Australian High Commissioner is cot exaggerating when he declares " the anti-immigrationists to be the most infamous landgrabbers of the whole world." He might well have added that they are the most foolish, for only an adequate population can preserve our British colonies from being seized upon, sooner or later, by some ambitious and warlike European or Asiatic Power. This is as true of New Zealand as of Awtralia. While we are. bickering over the few hundred thousand pounds required to give the railway communication needed to develop the East Coast, and art listening to idle eloquence upon the wickedness of buying from the Maori, for settlement, land which has never been touched by the hand of man, militant Germany is afflicted by extraordinary unemployment, and militant Japan is gasping in unprecedented famine. The only sound policy for the Reform or any other Government to pursue is to push forward the opening, undo.r attractive conditions, of every desirable acre in New Zealand, and to leave nothing undone which may bring to us reinforcements in the shape of sturdy British settlers. We cannot strengthen the Empire unless we garrison our country with men who will make their homes here and

fight for. their homes on emergency. A New Zealand of 5,000,000 British people, an Empire of 150,000,000 British, people, would, be .impregnable, whereas . our great waste spaces of desirable laud are a

enace to peace because an irresistible bait to the land-hungry nations of/the whole world.