NEW BLOOD.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 6384, 5 December 1907, Page 4

NEW BLOOD.

One of the prime essentials to the progress of Now Zealand and to the safety of its possessions is people. It is erroneously hold by the false political economist that the arrival of an extra workman who will compete with the already established workman constitutes a danger to the latter. New Zealand must for many years to oome be under-populated, chiefly because the natural increase of the comparatively few people domiciled here is not large enough to constitute a great added strength, and also because the distance from tiho centres of population is so great that it entails on those who I undertake the journey many a wrench. It is just as essential to-day that those who leave their homes to begin life afresh in new and strange lands should bo imbued with the spirit of pioneering as it was in those distant days when a small trickle of population slowly followed the whalers. The addition to the New Zealand community of one boat-load of strong, healthy, hopeful Anglo-Saxons is matter for congratulation, oven if only from the point of view that a country which ia j

worth taking is harder to take when there are more men there than formerly to protect it. There is yet immense scope for the work of pioneers in New Zealand, and it is safe to say that many of those who have just arrived in the lonic will find strenuous work to hand in the development of a country which is to a very great extent lying fallow, waiting for extra energy, more muscle, and added brains to increase a productiveness that is already , an object-lesson to other countries and • an example of what Nature can do when she is disposed to exert her most beneficent influences. There is room only in this Dominion for men and women who understand that New Zealand is yet in the making, and who will help to finish the work begun. There is no room at all for the person who, expecting to find a rose-strewn path, treads on a thorn and curses tho j path. Industry is in its infancy and , commerce in its early youth, vigorous j enough, but not in the fulness of its strength. To the selfish who view these arriving hundreds of our own flesh and j blood as interlopers desiring to de- ' crease the comforts of the few, we may say that an expressed fear that a newcomer is a rival is an expression of weakness. The weak will always go to tho wall, and there is over a place at the top for those who mean to get there. These people from the lonic ooano from islands that are famous for commerce, for freedom, and for wealth. They have fought the battle of life under the same flag that we in New i Zealand fight under, and if they are shifting their camp they do so merely to make our camp the stronger. It is that they shall help to make 1 Now Zealand as potent in the estima- j t : on of the world as Britain is, that ; they come -to this outpost of the Em- i pire, and the fact that they are all of our blood, imbued with our ideals, and serving the same great end, makes the majority of us offer a warm welcome to them. It is good for our insularity that New Zealand’s population shall be recruited from outside, and it is good for the insularity of those who come that their views shall be broadened, that they shall see and feel the disappointments that mark the road to success. Failures there are in every line of life, who blame a new country for the faults they themselves bring with them, and successes there are even iu Now Zealand who are ready to kick the ladder that helped them to their eminence. It is inevitable that New Zealand shall become the home of a very numerous people, and it is of the highest importance that those who augment the population shall be of our colour, filled with the same aspirations, and ready to take up and share our special burdens. Tho presence of one more Anglo-Saxon in the community means that there is so much less room for aliens, that a country needing strength is obtaining it, and that this Dominion is the better able to develop its resources. Of late years there has evolved a wider Imperial knowledge, due unquestionably to the ease and cheapness of travel. It is necessary, so that the travel shall he easy and cheap, that the ocean ways shall be guarded, and the larger the population of any Imperial outpost is, the greater need for this guardianship and consequently the >grcater the safety of the Empire. In ! the constant succession of groat ocean • liners which bring tho new-comer, to jNow Zealand one sees the link that ! binds ns to those of our blood who are settled in widely-severed lands. The ships that bring our friends to help us are the great colonising agency. The greater the ships and the greater tiheir human freight, the greater must become the Empire under whose flag they steam.