FUTURE OF NEW ZEALAND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19124, 19 March 1924, Page 8

FUTURE OF NEW ZEALAND

FACTORS TO lls SURE PROGRESS. AN AMERICAN IMPRESSED. iFnou Ova Own Correspondent.} AUCKLAND, March 18. “The mixture of pure Scottish and English blood in the Now Zealand race, a mixture than which there is no better, is a basis for building a great country in these islands,” remarked Dr Francis F. Emerson, of Harvard University, on the eve of his departure from New Zealand. Dr Emerson was much impressed with New Zealand’s great resources, agricultural, mineral, and climatic, together with the pure stock from which the people sprang, and with what he described as the intelligent settlement of the country. These factors, ho said, in combination would ensure the dominion’s progress being very rapid. Seldom, in view of the present world conditions, was a country so happily situated as was New Zealand that she could produce and export beyond her own needs, reserving ample supplies for her own people. The importance of selecting immigrants of a desirable class was regarded as an essential precaution by Dr Emerson, who had in mind the influx of undesirable aliens into the United States and the creation of the racial problem in America. He remarked that, an undesirable class had been admitted for the purpose of filling the mills, with the result that an opposite policy had now been reverted to—that of restricting the influx instead of encouraging it. It was one thing to get a population and quite another to get rid of it. New Zealand, howove.r, was in such a position to control her immigration laws in the earlier stages of the country’s development that a proper mixture of other blood to keep the race progressing could he regulated very easily. The visitor hod a warm tribute to pav to the work of Dr Truby King, whose methods had attracted attention throughout tho whole medical world. Dr King’s work was remarkable, stated Dr Emerson, not. only because of the young lives it saved, but also because of tho impression it made on those lives in later life.