HARDLY FAIR.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCVIII, Issue 18084, 11 July 1923, Page 9

HARDLY FAIR.

Australia and Japs.

MR HUGHES FAVOURS ADMISSION.

;>Y CABLE—PRESS ASSN.—COPYRIGHT SYDNEY, Tuesday. Mr Hughes, in a special article in' the “Daily Telegraph,” urging the 1 need for developing and populating Australia, points out that Japan, as a matter of necessity of life and death, must find an outlet for hor surplus population. She boliovos in the j greatness of her destiny, and feels j capable of going much further than | she has done in national development. ; And is she to be told that she alone among the nations must not do so? It is hardly fair of Australia, wliO'.-u great need is population, to complain. If she does not consent to impose checks on her own population, if these millions knock at our doors, how are we to deny admittance? We cannot hope to find shelter behind some Treaty of Washington. Another League of Nations cannot help us, and it will be to the interest of the greater part of the world that these starving millions should settle in Australia. These millions, with certain death bohind them, may never come, but if they do, and find us, still a mere i handful of people in possession of a great continent, then for us and our cherished ideals, it is the end. We must prove ourselves worthy to fence off from an over-crowded world one of the earth’s first possessions. A little time is still ours to prepare, by filling, our vacant spaces with men and women of our own race, and do all that needs doing to make good our claims to a great, fruitful continent.