EMPIRE MIGRATION

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12356, 28 January 1926, Page 4

EMPIRE MIGRATION

CO-OPERATION ESSENTIAL BRITAIN WILL NOT PAY FOR EVERYTHING MR AMERY DEFINES POLICY Br Telegraph.—Press Assn. —Copyright. Australian and N.Z. Cable Association. LONDON, January 26. A deputation from the Colonial Institute waited on the Colonial Secretary Mr Leopold Amery, and urged the initiation , of an Empire crusade to explain to every citizen the seriousness of the situation, and the necessity for a redistribution of population. The crusade should be non-party, and Labour should cooperate. The Government, it was urged, should evolve a land settlement policy for Britain' offering terms as favourable as those of the Dominions. This would remove the suspicion of migration which, existed among the rank and file of the Labour movement. DISAPPOINTINGLY LOW .Mr Amery agreed that the proper distribution of the people of the Empire was tho key to the future of Imperial strength. He confessed that he was disappointed with the slowness of migration in recent years. It was the first , essential to get publio opinion at Home and overseas to march ahead. He emphasised that increased trade would lead to the demand for migrants. It was obviously impossible, he declared, for the Government to undertake the responsibility of administering settlements overseas or even of controlling the selection, becaused assisted migration must be co-operatively administered and financed. Any departure from the fifty-fifty principle would destroy _ the moral basis of cooperation, while voluntary migration societies could not expect. the Government to pay all their administrative expenses. MAY PAY FOR TRAINING The Government felt that in one direction _ they might be ultimately justified in departing from the co-op-erative principle, namely in providing at the Government’s sole cost training centres in Britain for men with families and single girls before migration. He hoped eventually to amend the Empire Settlement Act in that direction. In the meantime he was watching the Ministry at Labour’s training experiments.