POPULATION NEED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23600, 8 March 1940, Page 8

POPULATION NEED

CRISIS FOR DOMINION IMMIGRATION PROPOSAL ROTARY CONFERENCE ADDRESS [BY TELEGRAPH —OWN CORRESPONDENT] PALMERSTON NORTH. Thursday With all eyes turned to the war, it was rather startling to hear at the Rotary conference being held in Palmerston North that New Zealand was facing a major crisis within its shores. Dr. Erie Stubbs, of Oamaru, speaking on the need for a larger population, said that the next ten years might well be decisive in the whole future of the country. "Either we may remain British or we may be progressively subdued and submerged by foreign invasion," said Dr. Stubbs. "For any material increase in our security. New Zealand needs an average of 80,000 immigrants a year for the next 10 to 15 years." Could immigrants be absorbed in such numbers? he asked. He thought so, if we were prepared to take certain small risks on inconvenience and hardship, and endure some degree of restriction of our present standard of comfort and luxury.

What Ur. Stubbs had to say was a summary of some of the facts and conclusions in a book he is preparing. He stated that for immediate leisure and luxury we were sacrificing the future of our race, if our leaders realised that and clearly proclaimed the fact, people would willingly co-operate to avert the danger that threatened. "We cannot gain security solely by our own efforts," the speaker added. "We are so small a country that unless we have strong friends we are always at the mercy of any powerful aggressive people. If wo achieve security it will be as a part of the British Empire, or at least of an Australasia that has undergone a renaissance. Let us do our part in bearing children and in co-operating for the better distribution of the peoples of the Empire, so that we shall be less tempting to alien eyes."