MIGRATION AND DEFENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18354, 21 March 1923, Page 9

MIGRATION AND DEFENCE.

ESSENTIAL IMPERIAL POLICY.

MAN-POWER OF THE EMPIRE

Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. (Reed. 8.5 p.m.) LONDON. March 19Mr. L. C. M. S. Amery, First Lord of the Admiralty, speaking at the Constitutional Club, said he hoped that Britain would adopt an emigration policy as one of the greatest of its national and Imperial aims. It was a matter not only of trade, but of defence. One settler in tli« Dominion was 20 times more valuable to Britain than one in the friendliest foreign country. He pleaded earnestly for a whole-hearted policy of Imperial preference. In reply to a question in the House of Commons to-day, whether the Government was taking any action to accelerate emigration to the overseas Dominions, Mr. W. Ormsby Gore, Under-Secretary for the Colonies, said that he hoped to discuss with Sir George Fuller, Premier of New South Wales, next week, a scheme for the settlement of emigrants in that State.

DISAPPOINTED SETTLER.

HARD LIFE IN AUSTRALIA.

Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. (Reed. 7.5 p.m.) LONDON. March 19. A Welsh miner who was an ex-service emigrant under the Government scheme has written home alleging that he and his companions worked 13 hours a day on a Victorian farm. Later they went West, whence they were sent to the bush, to be employed in clearing at the rate of lis an acre. He gave up his job, and is now in Perth. He wrote: "As soon as yon land they send yon into the bush. It is harder work than coal-mining, and there is hardly any comfort. You live like blacks. Two hundred have gone back to England in the last two months, and the remainder would go if they had the money."