"EMPTY AUSTRALIA”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18563, 25 May 1922, Page 5

"EMPTY AUSTRALIA”

LORD NORTHCLIFFE IN THE TIMES. EMPIRE SUPPLEMENT, Press Association—By Tt-legraph—Copyright LONDON, May 23. Lord Northclille, in a special article in the Empire Day supplement to The Times on “'Empty Australia,” asks, what is awaiting our dominions in the Pacific, where Australia and New Zealand stand as twin trustees of the Empire’s destiny? When the Great Powers met at Washington, Australia was more vitally interested, her voice was heard with more respect, and her fate was more irrevocably bound in the issue than at Versailles or Paris. “I know,” continues Lord Northcliffe, “how far the efforts of Senator Pearce and Sir John Salmond went to help in the happy solution which was found in the abrogation of the old alliance. The formation of the new Pacific Pact brings Australia peace for the present, but responsibility, for the future, because the two southern dominions support our cornerstone in the Tour-Power Agreement.”— The Times. EMPIRE SETTLEMENT BILL. CHAIN OF MIGHTY NATIONS. BENEFITS OF INTER-IMPERIAL MIGRATION. LONDON, May 25. The Times, in a leading article, says: “The Empire is no longer a group of farflung dependencies, but a chain of mighty nations, girdling the world. National and Imperial greatness is far more likely to be achieved by securing the substance the unity of Britain and the dominions, than by chasing the shadow, European reconstruction among nations that nave yet to find reconstruction themselves. Co-opera-tion among our own kith and kin is surely the kery which will lead our nation from the darkened maze in which it wanders to-day. The Empire Settlement Bill stands as a most notable landmark in our history. The benefits of inter-imperial migration are threefold in character—the dominions gain in the development of their resources and the peopling of their spaces, Britain gains in the relief of her surplus population and assistance in regard to unemployment, and the Empire gains in the gradual strengthening of the ties which bind its component parts together. By preserving the Empire’s alliances, by developing its resources, and above all by the cultivation of understanding, from which is born mutual confidence and affection, we shall keep it a commonwealth that for long will stand four square to all the world.”—The Times.