MORE BABIES NEEDED.

Wairarapa Age, 7 October 1936, Page 5

MORE BABIES NEEDED.

THE EMPIRE’S DECLINING BIRTH RATES. GREAT BRITAIN’S POSITION. DOUBTS ABOUT MIGRATION. (Received Tuesday, 10.40 p.m.) LONDON, October 6. The 4 4 Morning Post,” in a leader on migration, says: 11 Hitherto it has been customary to speak of the necessity of filling the Dominions’ empty spaces from our own surplus, but the moment is approaching when the Empire will be compelled to review the whole problem in a new light, because in a very few years, so far from having a surplus, we shall ourselves be suffering a decline in population. Can Britain, therefore, afford to suffer an additional diminution through migration lest her man power resources become dangerously weak? In other words, ought we to encourage renewed migration until our birthrate show’s a sustained and substantial rise. You can only fill up the Empire out of a continuing surplus and now that no surplus is being produced, either in Britain or in the Dominions, the problem has begun to wear an entirely different aspect. Clearly the solution is more babies, and that subject ought to engage the anxious attention of any future Imperial Conference. ’ ’