MR. ROOSEVELT ON NEW ZEALAND.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 102, 20 June 1911, Page 3

MR. ROOSEVELT ON NEW ZEALAND.

■ n'i ' L °~ Obminenting in -the “Outlook” upon the work on “-Racial Decay,’ recently published by Mr Beale, ot Sydney, Mr Roosevelt says:—“One of the strangest and saddest things in the ■,whole" sad, 'business' is-"that the decline has been most' marked in the very places where one would expect to' see the abounding vigour of the filch' most strikingly displayed. In Australia and New Zealand there is tiri wafiuit whatever in economic conditions for a limitation of the birthrate,' and the course of events in these great new* countries demonstrates beyond possibility of refutation that the decline in the birthrate i 3 not due to economic forces, and has no relation whatsoever" to hard conditions ’of living. New Zealand is as ‘largo as Great Britain and as fertile; is between one-thirtieth and duo-fortieth that of Great Britain. It is composed of the sons and grandsons of the most enterprising and adventurous people in the Old Country, and the Now Zealand people have realised to an extraordinary degree the institutional and industrial ambitions of democracy everywhere; yet the rate of natural increase in Now Zealand is actually lower than in Great, Britain, and has tended steadily to decrease. The Australians are sparsely scattered over the fringe of the great island continent. It is a continent which could support, without the slightest difficulty, tenfold the present population, aim at the same time raise the general standard of well-being. Net its sparse population tends to concenfrate in great, cities of disproportionate size compared to the country population, just as is the case in England and the United States, and in so many of the countries of Europe; and it so slowly that, even if the presejVt rate were maintained, the population would not double itself in the next century; while, if the rate of decrease of the last decade continues, the population will have become stationary by the middle of the century. if this is so, then the men who rally to the battle-cry of a ‘White Australia’ have, indeed ground for aiixictjv, as they think ol the teeming myriads steadily increasing north of (them in Asia. In private life no man can permanently hold land of which ho makes no use, and in the life of nations it is absolutely certain that in the end no race can hold a territory save on condition of developing and populating it.”