The New Zealand Times. THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 1917. THE NURSERY OF EMPIRE

New Zealand Times, Volume XLII, Issue 9632, 12 April 1917, Page 4

The New Zealand Times. THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 1917. THE NURSERY OF EMPIRE

Tho British nursery as the nursery of Empire is practically the text of an article on the “Birth-Rate” in a recent “Edinburgh Review,” by Dean Inge, of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. “It would be criminal folly,” rightly declares the dean, “not to people our Dominions with our stock while yet there is time.” “The nest 50 years,” he contends, “will decide for all time whether those magnificent and still empty countries are to ho the home of groat nations speaking our language, carrying on our institutions, and valuing our traditions. .. . The real issue of this war is whether our great colonies are to continue British; and tho question will bo decided not only on the field of battle, but by the action of our Government and people .after peace is declared!” He might well have added, for if is; the whole purport of his article, that, while 'the battles which won the British Empire were “won on the playfields of Eton,” the struggle that is to keep the Empire British must bo won in the nurseries of Britain. For this reason he deplores the low birth-rate, which he fears “may indicate a tendency to withdraw from the struggle for existence and sacrifice tho future for the present” ; and he states that “there have been signs that many of our countrymen no longer think the strenuous life worth while.”

Dean Inge is no doubt what Lord Halsbury would mordantly style “a sort or an Imperialist,” and he may be in some sort a eugonist; but it is to be regretted that he is no sort of an economist. It is, indeed, very greatly to bo regretted that he is not an economist, for it will yet be found that any Imperialism or any eugenics really worthy of the name must be based upon sound economics. It will yet bo found that of all tho scientific research which is being advocated as essential to secure national and Imperial efficiency, the most necessary because the most fundamental, though the least mentioned, is economic research. And economic research involves, in the first place, a scientific, an impartial, and really accurate stock-taking oi our national and Imperial resources, of our national and Imperial man-power and woman-power, of our national and Imperial institutions, and even oi our national and Imperial traditions. Yet of this Dean Inge is, to all appearances, blissfully unconscious. Were Dean Inge an economist, an up-to-date economist, at any rate, he would know that, with the greatly improved methods and the wonderful mechanical and other inventions of the twentieth century, there is in the nature of things no need whatever under just economic conditions for the present fierce “struggle for existence”; nor for the too “strenuous life,” with its uncertain and often most inadequate rewards, which many Britons assuredly “no longer think worth while.” How little of an economist is Dean Inge, and how little ho has done in the way of any real attempt at national, let alone imperial stocktaking, is shown by his declaration that “the British Isles are even dangerously full, so that we are liable to bo starved out if we lose command of

the sea.” It is only too true that the people of the British Isles arc liable to be starved out if Britain loses command of the sea. That fact is, indeed, the chief ‘‘raison d’etre” and the only hope of success of the German submarine piracy. But that possibility of starvation is not due to the fact that the British Isles are dangerously full. It is, on the contrary, due to the fact that the land of the British Isles is dangerously under-developed, upwards of one-third of the United Kingdom being held idle for “sport,” while millions of acres more are only half-used, or even Jess than half-used, producing only half, or even less than half, the foodstuffs that they can produce and ought to produce. If he would be a sound Imperialist and a sound eugenist, Dean Inge must first be a sound economist. He must get rid of class bias and face in an impartial, scientific spirit such problems as those indicated above. When he does this be will realise that if the British Empire is to be sound it must first bo sound at heart—that, as SirHenry Campbell-Bannerman declared years ago, Britain’s first duty is to colonise her own countryside. He will see, too. that if the millions of unused and half-used acres in the British Isles were forced into full rise, the farm labourers' “struggle for existence” would bo very different from ,what it is today; and that while the agricultural workers might still lead a ‘ "strenuous life,” it would not be at once overstrenuous and underpaid as it now certainly is. Were Dean Inge an economist, ho might still lament with the eugenist that under present unjust conditions “everywhere the tendency is for the superior stock to dwindle till it becomes a small aristocracy,” but he would, not be guilty of the fatuous comment that “pride and a high standard of living are not biological virtues.” He. would not tell us that, “as for South Africa, the Kaffir can live like a gentleman (according to his own ideas) on six months’ ill-paid work every year; the Englishman finds an income of £2OO too small. There is only one end to this kind of colonisation.” Eor would he state that “the danger at home is that the larger part of the population is now beginning to insist upon a scale of remuneration and a standard' of comfort which are incompatible with any survival value. We all wish to be privileged aristocrats, -with no serfs to' work for us.” What, we may ask, would be the “survival value,” in competition with Germany, of an Empire full of British Kaffirs —that is to say, of Britishers “living. like gentlemen” according to Kaffir ideas? What, again, we may ask, is the “survival value” of “a scale pf remuneration and a standard of comfort” such as is to be found in tbe British slums, 50 per cent, of the manhood of which were found in some oases to be physically unfit to “fight for their country” ? Good pay, good conditions of lif© and labour, and a proper pride are. as a matter of fact, essential to the building up of a truly Imperial race. Given such pay and such conditions, the British nursery can be trusted to provide ample stock and the best of stock to build up the Empire. Further, the economic reforms required to secure such pay and conditions at Home are also needed in the Dominions themselves to open up the land, not only for British stock, but even for our own returned soldiers. Dean Inge, apparently, has yet to learn that even in matters of population quality is of more importance than quantity; that the true Imperial, the true eugenist, the true British ideal is that we should all be aristocrats yet all democrats. All aristocrats—all of the best that is to say—but with no privilege; -with- no serfs amongst us and with no 'serfs to work for us. All democrats, because each and all sharing duly in the government of nation and of Empire, and each doing his full "share of the work of nation and of Empire.