EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume L, Issue 16349, 5 February 1924, Page 7

EMPIRE DEVELOPMENT.

OPPORTUNITY FOR LABQft MINISTER.. TRIBUTE TO MR. THOMAS. (Klec. Tel. Copy light— United Press Assn.) (Sydney iSuu Special.) LONDON, Feb. 3. Ml'. Sidney Low, in an article in the Despatch, commenting on Mr. MacDohuld's oppoitttmeht of Mr. Thomas to the Colonial Office, describes him as probably the most energetic and capable of the genuine Laborites. His' appointment will help to bring home to Labor and to the English aiul SeUtbh working classes generally a deeper and wider consciousness of the meaning arid character of the Empire; for wltbsb government and. guidance they are ilow largely responsible. The attitude of a majority of the laboring people towards the outer Empire lias been distrustful. The words ''lmperial'' and "Empire" stick in their throats. There is still a good deal of prejudice against overseas expansion handed down from the early Victorian times. In the nineteenth century the Radical and the Liberal did not much like Empire. To them it bore the taint of monopoly, privilege and militarism. We are not peopling vast, potentially rich Britannic areas beyoltd the seas fast enough for their Safety or ours. This failure was partly due to the- prejudice of trade' union leaders atid orators and is inherited ft'oth their Radical progenitors. They have not been enthusiastic over State-aided or philanthropic emigration schemes and have sometimes suspected them of betng more schemes of the well-to-do for shipping the poor and illpaid to distant lands instead of properly providing for them at home. Mr. Thomas, as a trades union Colonial Secretary, may do much to counteract this. He will havo opportunities of convincing his followers that Britain cannot endure and steadily increase her insular population. Her surplus must go abroad or sink into miseiy. "I believe," he said, "if the British peoo'.e are still to play their part, politically and industrially, on the world stage that they must have a larger island that this of ours. There is a larger island ready for them—Australia—which stands to Asia as Britain does to Europe. Australia is the Greater Britain of the future if we don't put off the future too long till others take n from us."