OVERSEAS SETTLEMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, 13 March 1920, Page 8

OVERSEAS SETTLEMENT.

ASSISTANCE TO EX-SOLDIERS.

NECESSITY FOR CAREFUL SELECTION.

By Telejraph.—Press Asm.— Copyrl£bt. London, March 8. la the House of Commons, Colonel Amery, Under-Secretary for the Colonies, speaJcing on the Colonial Office vote, described the work of the Overseas Settlement Office and particularly emphasised the assistance given to exservice men. Hitherto 10,000 applications, totalling- 18,000 persons, had been received. The overseas Governments had passed 2000 persons, some of whom had already sailed. The total expenditure on the scheme might reach one million sterling for 1920-1921. Colonel Amery mentioned that lie would shortly introduce a Bill by which the Dominions' Governments would be enabled to enforce payments from men who had deserted their families in Great Britain. Payments would he transmitted to the board of guardians maintaining the families.

He referred to the formation of a federation embracing alt immigration societies. Canada was interested m the settlement of women, and the Canadian Government's substantial assistance to the whole scheme was onh the beginning of one of the most important Empire movements.

Colonel Emery dwelt on the desirableness of the careful selection of men wishing to proceed overseas. Nobodv suggested that .Great Britain could hold all the people who had gone to the Dominions, on the contrary if there had not been great immigration during the last century and there had been no Dominions with which to trade we could not support ourselves to-day. He emphasised the desirableness of encouraging men to migrate to parte of the Empire instead of to foreign lands Those who stayed under the flag were a strength and asset to the Empire ir peace or war, but of quite different character were those who went to other onun tries. It could he reckoned safely that one Englishman who went to the Dominions was. from the standpoint of the safety of the Empire, worth twenty times as much as one who went even to so friendly a country outside" the Emoiri* as the United States.—lmperial Service.