The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 2. IMPERIAL RELIEF.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 174, 2 November 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 2. IMPERIAL RELIEF.

For the emigration of English town boys to colonial farms a society has been instituted at Home, and presumably drafts of these young Englishmen will arrive in various colonies from time to time. Mr. Sedgwick, secretary for the scheme, has said that "emigration is the only final form of relief by which the Home Country and the oversea dominions are benefited." This seems true enough under the conditions existing in Britain, where class selfishness still keeps the underdog well trampled on and the groans of the starved pauper blend with the moans of the incalculably rich who are being asked to shell out an augmented proportion ■ of their unearned increments. Perhaps from the point of view of Empire it is not altogether an evil thing that intolerance and hauteur reign at Home and makes it impossible for British people to live in reasonable decency in the land of their birth, for fervid utterances are not Imperialism and the need for people in these lands is being emphasised each day by the march of events. Sir Edward Grey has lately said that the world desires peace. The world has always prel tended it desired peace, and has ever been ready for war. It may be that the nations are about to beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks, but there is no evidence anywhere that man has changed his whole nature. If we accept the assertion that man has not changed, and that what has happened in the past will happen again it must be seen that neither imports, exports, nor general prosperity represent the real essential, but the people, and plenty of them, are the best insurance for future safety. The future of New Zealand, as far as her national position is concerned, is probably more closely associated with that of Australia than many concede. That is to say, the troubles of Australia, which all statesmen -see and all people hope may be avoided, must necessarily be the troubles of New Zealand. The journal Standard of Empire, which, however, has been mostly the Standard of Canada, has been busy lately frightening emigrants from Australia by telling the world that Australia is an empty place that may be invaded with great "ease. The paper said that the only salvation for Australia was enormous influx of population, but while it said so is also pointed out that the Anglo-Japanese agreement expired in five years, the assumption being that the millions of emigrants who are needed in Australia—and New Zealand—should J stay away if they value their necks. The population of Australia has not appreciably advanced in the past five years. At least, the increase is not great enough to sensibly strengthen the country's physical defence. New Zealand is in exactly the same category, and, unaccountably in countries where every imported lower animal thrives and increases amazingly, the human animal is not as prolific as circumstances should warrant. There seems to be no accounting for Nature's vagaries. Much attention has lately been ' directed to Java, where in a little over one hundred years the population has increased from three and a-half millions to thirty-two millions. The population doubles in every thirty-five years, and Java is a little island containing only 51,240 square miles. This is four thousand square miles smaller than our own South Island, and Java would be utterly lost in an Australian State. This merely by way of illustrating the real emptiness of the great island continent and our own country. It may be that a cycle of phenomenal racial increase will visit these British lands but that such a cycle is coming is not obvious, and therefore any successful methods that are being taken to augment the population from outside must strengthen our hands. It seems imperative that the interests of the Powers and the Press in lands having! too many people must be aroused to the emptiness of the Australian continent and New Zealand. We can never compete with Canada in the attraction of surplus people from old lands, unless we make the acquisition of land both for our nativeborn and our relatives oversea as easy as the Canadian Government does. The people of any State do not fight for a national ideal solely, and in older communities the best argument against militarism is that the soldier who has no property must fight for the man who owns the land and controls the wealth. The strongest national sentiment is only possible in countries where ownership is most widely diffused and where there are few disparities. To illustrate the point: If Australia and New Zealand were settled with small freeholders, and supposing every man had as much right to become a proprietor of land as every other man, there could be no question of the sentiment that would animate the populations if they were called upon to defend their collective and individual rights. On the other hand, if in either country no land had been alienated from the State, the stimulus to defend what everybody owned would be a more potent one than the wagging of flags or the yelling of jingle. It may be taken for granted that the man who is frozen out of old countries possesses no national sentiment of any kind, but that he is soil for the planting of one. In the British Empire there are tens of thousands of people born under foreign flags who are now good British Imperialists merely because 'of their personal success in the lands of their adoption. By its treatment of new- [ comers does a new country help to lay the foundation of future security. The overplus of old lands aie their menace. Transplanted to a place where the individual may thrive the overplus may be a

blessing because individual success is the germ of every national sentiment. The individual or the nation lighting for itself has the victory half won.