Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. MONDAY, JULY 10, 1916. WASTE MEN.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLI, Issue 11619, 10 July 1916, Page 4

Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. MONDAY, JULY 10, 1916. WASTE MEN.

■ ■ THESE lots been much dismission in Groat Britain ns to the disposal of the men now fighting for tile Empire when the wnr is ended. A number of people, Sir Eider Hnggfird among them, are also so Jacking in imagination amt reaouroo that they (mu only suggest emigration as a moans of relieving what they regard as a surplus of men when they ail return from the war, Sir Eider Haggard is, therefore, touring; the Empire in the hope of being ablo |o make provision for thorn in British

Colonies, awd 'thus to attain them within thw Empire 'rather than allow thews to dri£t fco the United States or som® other foreign country. So far’as the’endeavour to keep all the splendid material within the Empire fold is concerned the project is sufficient!}’ patrio tic to secure the approbation of us all. But the design of wholesale expatriation of men who deserve far better at the hands of the community is one which we can* only imagine sensible and humane jieople would severely condemn. Already Canada and Australia have begun to compete for a share of the British exodus and both of them can absorb large numbers and probably offer them more favourable conditions of existence than their own country and occupations can provide them with. In so far’as that is possible the endeavour to attract good settlers'to their shores is wise.

But the idea that must surely strike all sensible people in the British Islesis that if men are so valuable to the Colonies and Dominicns that they are prepared to compete for them, to expend money in starting them in their new home

and rejoice in the assumption that they will gather in a rich harvest of humanity after the war, there must be .something valuable in the material which they appear to he anxious to clear out of the .country, A few people are apparently beginning to realise the fact. We have seen that Lord Sel borne has given it as his opinion that it is the duty of Great Britain to provide lanfTfbr soldiers who may require it rather than see a vast exodus of its very best manhood from the country. If a country is worth fighting for it is, or ought to be, good enough to live in. These men whom it is proposed to expatriate might very well ask themselves and fho country the question as to why naatiou, which can spend one thousand five hundred to *wo thousand millions'of money per annum in wasteful war, 'cannot devote the few hundred millions which would be necessary to establish or to succour industries and agriculture sufficient to employ everyone of the five millions of men, if need be, in productive labour. Even if, during a year’s peace, the Government spent equal to a year’s expenditure .in’war—the whole £2,000,000,000—in building np a vast industrial and export business in order to keep its best material at home, the money, besides- being a splendid social and economic investmen t would keep the country strong in an international environment where strength and the ability to parry, or strike,'a blow is a condition of independent existence. For ourselves, in preference to seeing the millions turned out of their own country we would rather see a few British towns and cities knocked to pieces by German shell fire, if\io fatalities occurred, so that there should be jileuty of work for the returned population in reconstruction as there is now in France and Belgium and as we hope there will he in Germany. At present Britain needs its men more than any colony or dominion does. We are afraid that the project of wholesale expatriation has not been dictated as much by regard for the interests of the returning men as by apprehension of labour turmoil if hundreds of thousands of men are suddenly thrown on to a disorganised labour matrket by demobilisation. There would be, of course, if it is done in the-brutal and indiscriminate manner in which the bxpatriationists evidently expect demobilisation to take place. And so there ought to be. It will, however, be in the a selfpreservative act as well of justice to the men who will have won the great victory by their exertions, their privations and sufferings, to see that absorption in labour keeps pace with demobilisation and for the Government itself, if it become necessary, to employ enormous numbers of them in the vast workshops which have been organised for the production of munitions. The Colonies can wait lor their population rather than see their protector weakened and its manhood reduced to the crippled, the unlit ami the conscientious objector —a country, in tact, without men and practically peopled only with women, England would soon be the happy hunting ground of the RUssinnlnnd German Jew, when we need more than ever that the old race should be kept as pure of blood as ever, so that its surplus manhood should continue t.o find its way to the enter lauds of the Empire. 9