AUSTRALIA'S CRYING NEED.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13486, 4 June 1914, Page 7

AUSTRALIA'S CRYING NEED.

Speaking in London recently of Australia's progress in the last, four years, the Hi^li Commissioner (Sir G. Reid) said the quickness of its rate and the soundness of its character had made a strong impression on his mind. <:Of course," he added, "I am speaking generally, because there is no community, young or old, which is not open to criticism in some respects. I will indulge in one regret myself. The rate of all-round development in the rural districts, substantial though it be, is not equal to the remarkable advances visible in the capital cities. One thing, however, did stand out splendidly last year, and that' was the notable advance in the extent of wheat farms. But the enormous land spaces in Australia, that ought to be scenes of prosperous enterprise in stages above the pastoral, and which are still almost wholly occupied by live-stock, are to me a source of'wonder and regret." Passing to the questiou of Australia's crying need—population — Sir George said:—"The good times in Great Britain, at which eve.-yone ought to rejoice, make it more difficult to get immigrants from Home. But we

must yet good people somehow, if not from the Mother Country, then from other countries. We do not so much want city dwellers. We have enough of them, for a- time, at least. We want, above all, those who can be taken from rural life in the old ■world to rural life in Australia. I have always advocated that kind of immigration which secures boys, if men are not available. It is, perhaps, the best kind of &11 in the long run. Immigrants who want to start on a 'soft' job are quite out of place in Australia, and only cumber the ground there, as, indeed, they do everywhere. But men of health and strength, and readiness to make a bit of a fight at the start, can soon \vinc one of the happiest lives in 'the world for men who have, to depend on their own resources. Men, women, ar.d childern count for more beneath the Southern Cross than they do in any other land."