FOUNTAIN OF LIVES

Taranaki Daily News, 17 August 1935, Page 18 (Supplement)

FOUNTAIN OF LIVES

IS IT DRYING UP? EMPTY LANDS OF THE EMPIRE. The serious decline in the number of, children in Britain's elementary schools lends importance to the corresponding decline nf population in the Dominions. In the past the British Isles have been as a fountain of lives for the Empire. Because the people went abroad to build new fortunes the Dominions came" into being and grew to importance. Now the fountain is dried up. As recently as 1914, when the war broke' out, there were 727,000 boys and girls in London schools. The estimate for 1938 is only 525,000, a fall of 202,000 London children of school age in only 24 years! .If the people. are to maintain their numbers they must maintain a birthrate of 20 each year for every 1000 people in the country. Britain is short of this rate by over 5 per 1000, and therefore it has now no surplus lives to spare for emigration;, it needs more new lives to maintain its present numbers. In the Dominions things are little better,- Thus in South Africa, among the white population, as recently as 1929 the births were over 26 per 1000, but the figure for 1933 was only 23.7, and the 1934 figure is believed to be less, This is barely more' than replacement rate. The South African British are already in decline; the Dutch not yet. In Australia the rate in 1929 was 20, but in 1933 it was only 16.3, actually less than replacement rate, iri New Zealand the 1933 rate was only 16.6. or 3.4 short of replacement. Canada is a little better, for in 1932 the rate was 22.4. This is just above replacement rate, but there is a yearly fall, and the figure of last year is believed to be barely above replacement. Moreover the rate is maintained at this poor level only because the FrenchCanadian rate is still high. The British Canadians are below replacement rate. Now let us lopk at the white population of the British Commonwealth as a whole. In all the British Empire, covering a fourth of the entire land surface of the world, there ate no more than 71,700,000 white men, women and children, many of whom (French Canadians, Boers and others) are not of British race. In Germany locked within a small European boundary of 180,000 square miles, without colonies or chance to emigrate are 66,000,060 Germans. There are as many Germans in Germany as there are people of British race in the entire British Empire! The Empire mainly consists of native peoples of mgny races. In all it has 480,000,000 people, of whom nearly 50,000,000 are in; the British Isles and 430,000,000 overseas. Of the 430,000,000 overseas less than 22,000,000 are white. A great Canadian economist has called his land an empty country. That remark is also true of other parts of the Empire, especially of Australia. x