THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 30, 1909. GERMAN IMMIGRANTS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3150, 30 March 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 30, 1909. GERMAN IMMIGRANTS.

The arrival in the Commonwealth of a party of 130 Germans, who have come out with the intention of forming a German settlement at Gayndah, in Queensland, is a significant indication that the shrewd Teutons are becoming alive to the splendid pros pects open to them in Australasia. Judging by all accounts, further contingents are likely to arrive in Australia shortly from Germany. While Germans, like sturdy and healthy white immigrants from other European countries, are to be cordially welcomed as citiiens of the Commonwealth, their tendency to form distinctively German settlements in the country of their adoption is by no means an advantage from the point of view of Australia as a whole. Racial watertight compartments are not desirable in any country, but the experience both of the . United States and of the South American Republicans is that German immigrant are so strongly impressed by the sense of nationality that they exhibit a marked tendency to cling together in solid aggregations instead of merging readily with the general population. Happily, it has been found both in the United States and in Brazil—whsre there is a settlement of nearly 400,000 German speaking people —that only the actual immigrants themselves practise this habit of segregation from the general mass of the population. Those children who are born in the new land from German fathers and native - born mothers have no special sympathies with their father's country. It is the nationality of the mother which dictates the national outlook of the children. Hence, where German immigrants marry Australian women f as they do in the great majority of, cases, it may be anticipated that the next generation will be entirely Ausi tralian in its sympathies. While the German immigrants are to be frankly welcomed, as white men who wifl help to develop and to defend Australasia, we need have no .delicacy in declaring that those who are familiar with British institutions from the outset, and who are ready to merge at once into the broad stream of Australasian life, ought—other things being equal—to obtain the preference. Britishers first, if the right sort can be obtained.