AUSTRALIA’S DANGER

Southland Times, Issue 18990, 11 July 1923, Page 5

AUSTRALIA’S DANGER

JAPAN’S NEED OF OUTLET. MR HUGHES’ PLEA FOR POPULATION. (By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright). (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) SYDNEY, July 10. Mr Hughes, in a special article in the Daily Telegraph urging the need for developing and populating Australia emphasises that Japan, as a matter of necessity, of life and death, must find an outlet for her surplus population. “She believes in the greatness of her destiny and feels capable of going much further , than she has dope in national development, and is she to be told that she alone among the nations must not do so? It is hardly fair for Australia, whose great need is population, to complain if she consents to impose checks on her own population. If these millions knock at our doors how are we to deny them admittance ? We cannot hope to find shelter behind some treaty of Washington, or another League of Nations cannot help us, and it will be to the interest of the greater part of the world that these starving millions should settle in Australia rather than with them. These millions, with certain death behind them, may never come, but if they do and find us still a mere handful of people in possession of a great continent then for us and cherished ideals it is the end. We must prove ourselves worthy to fence off from an overcrowded world one of earth’s first possessions. A little time is still ours to prepare by filling our vacant spaces with men and women of our own race, and to do all that needs doing to make good our claim to a great and fruitful continent."