EMIGRATION

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVI, Issue 10537, 13 March 1920, Page 8

EMIGRATION

SETTLEMENT IN OVERSEA DOMINIONS. THE EX-SERVICE MEN. Australian and N.Z. Cable .Association. LONDON,, March 8. Speaking in the House of Commons on the Colonial Office vote. Colonel Amery, Under-Secretary for 'the Department, described tho work of tho Overseas Settlement Office. Ho particularly emphasised tho assistance given to ex-service men. Up to date, ten thousand applications, .totalling eighteen thousand persons, had been received, and the Overseas Governments had passed two thousand _ persons, some of whom had already sailed. The total expenditure on the scheme mb reach one million sterling in 1920 and 1921; He mentioned that ho_ would shortly introduce a bill by which tho Dominion Governments would be enabled to enforce payments from men who deserted their families in Great Britain. These payments would ho transmitted to the Board of Guardians maintaining the families. He referred to tho formation of a federation embracing all the immigration societies. Canada was interested in the settlement of women, and the Canadian Government’s substantial assistance in the whole scheme was only the beginning of one of the most important of Empire movements. Ho dwelt on tho desirability of careful selection of men wishing to proceed overseas. Nobody suggested that Great Britain could hold all tho peordo who had gone to tho Dominions; on the contrary, if it h; not been for the great emigration during the last century, and if there had been no Dominions with which to trade, wo could not support ourselves to-day. Ho emphasised the desirability of encouracring men to migrate to parts of the Elmpire, instead of to foreign lands. Those who stayed under the flag were a strength and an asset to the Empire in peace or war of quite a different character from those who wont to other countries. Ho could reckon safely that one Englishman who went to the Dominions was from the standpoint of the safety of the Empire, worth twenty times as much as one who went even to friendly a country outside tho Empire na the United States.