The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND SATURDAY, MAY 31, 1930 “THIS EMPIRE HUMBUG”

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 986, 31 May 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND SATURDAY, MAY 31, 1930 “THIS EMPIRE HUMBUG”

BINDER this caption a London weekly journal discusses the selfish attitude of the Dominions toward British migration to their untenanted, lovely lands.” It asserts that all sorts of bans and restrictions have been set up by the people of the Dominions against the immigration of their own kith and kin; also that “an unwholesome kind of snobbishness, a pettifogging commerciality, taints all our Dominion inter-relations.” It is for the Dominions to defend themselves against so candid a charge of selfishness and lack of patriotism. No one can deny that the former strong stream of emigration from Great Britain to Canada and Australia has dropped to a trickle, that to this country it practically has run dry. And no one need pretend that, in existing economic circumstances, many people in each of the Dominions resent assisted immigration, and denounce it more ferociously than they object to Asiatic immigrants. “Homies” and “Pommies” have become terms of reproach and protest. Unemployment is bad in Great Britain, and is mounting. It is relatively no better in the Dominions, and shows little signs of decreasing. The Empire possesses one-fifth of the whole earth, yet cannot find room in its most spacious and most promising areas for its unemployed. It has as many politicians and pays more for politics than the whole of Europe. The density of population, in Great Britain is about 478 persons to the square mile; in Canada,' it is fractionally less than three; much less than that in Australia; about fifteen in the Union of South Africa, and close on five in Rhodesia; and in New Zealand, almost in area equal to Great Britain, the density of population is only fourteen persons to every square mile. And there is no place in the lovely Dominions for the British unemployed ! No wonder observant Londoners, scrambling for elbow-room, are asking “What is behind this Empirewide ban on British migration?” Their own answer is not complimentary and possibly is also not altogether correct-—“ Mainly lack of vision and enterprise, and the abandonment of ideals to a cruel and crude selfishness.” The majority of patriotic people in the Dominions would agree readily to the first cause, for they, too, are cursed -with a lack of political vision and enterprise. But they will not agree at all to the ill-tempered reference to cruelty and crude selfishness, or to unwholesome snobbishness and pettifogging commerciality. There is in the United Kingdom plenty of the Dominions’ weaknesses or faults which cause vexation in London. As to commerciality, Great Britain ought really to look into its own mirror. Its -wealthy men prefer to wax fat as the Dominions’ bondholders, instead of enjoying a more active prosperity as shareholders in the industries of the Dominion. They sit in luxurious clubs, eat expensive dinners, sip wines of the right vintage and, cracking walnuts, recall the days when pioneers adventured into the far wilderness and, without State aid, made a livelihood at the worst and, at the best, amassed a comfortable fortune. Is it not about time the wise capitalists of Great Britain realised that the world is changing before their eyes, and that they should try pioneering with their wealth in the Dominions, where there is scope for industrial investment? Then what about the politicians in the world’s greatest and oldest Parliament? In the past decade, under a bright, constant glare of publicity for their collective wisdom, they have squandered £600,000,000 on the distribution of unemployment benefits without diminishing what British Islanders themselves snobbishly call the “dole queue.” ITad there been genuine wisdom among politicians, and vision and enterprise at the periodic conferences of Empire Prime Ministers and a horde of economic experts, surely that six hundred million pounds could have been spent to better advantage, could have been expended on transferring a million unemployed to the untenanted, lovely Dominions without exposing them unduly to the risk of miserable failure. When the Empire was in peril from aggression sixteen years :igo the grit of its sons was in no way inferior to the courage of the rugged pioneers. Moreover, even the politicians, for once driven out of their selfish party corners and prejudices, not only got - together, but also got things done. It is not necessary to recall the colossal muddle that was associated with their achievement; enough to emphasise the fact that they achieved in the Empire’s purpose. Is the threat or danger of social revolution, to say nothing at all about disunity, any less vital for the Empire? There is need of co-operation; need of financial and industrial organisation ; and the stern necessity for averting the sapping of moral fibre by an expansive distribution of unemployment doles in lieu of honest labour. It is not dislike of hard work that increases unemployment; it is a dearth of opportunity to work hard for a reasonable standard of social comfort. And if there is any “Empire humbug” about the lamentable business, it is found most active in high political places.