PORTENTOUS WARNING

Waipa Post, Volume 41, Issue 3196, 2 September 1930, Page 6

PORTENTOUS WARNING

v \i. POPULATION AND THE gI. ; EMPIRE. The decline of the birth rate of "France has been so much commented upon by French politicians, and by economists generally, that the average person is content to admit that it presents a deplorable state of affairs—for France—and to leave it at that. . It r is somewhat arresting, however, ana rather: disturbing, to be informed by authoritative writer, Sir Leo Chibzza Money, that the population of Great . Britain is virtually at a stand- ” still, and threatening to decrease, and t the increase in th,e white populaE i of the Empire as , a whole is al--3t negligible. In the eight years m 1921 to 1929, the writer shows by reference to statistics, the overseas white population of the Empire was increased by, no more than 2,700,000 to a total of 21,100,000, or at the rate of 333,000 per year. “It is a condition next to stagnation,” he reamrks, andadds that the figures for the more I recent years show the least progress. • The present population of Canada, r after more than 250 years have passed since the French-Canadian colony

first assumed any importance, is . less than 10,000,000; in Australia, the . second largest contributor to. the Empire’s white population, there are only about 6,500,000 people after a lapse of ' nearly a century and a half since the first white settlement; in the Union f South Africa the, white population 3 ljßoo,ooo, compared with a native opulation of 6,000,000. At the same ,„v,_ate. of progress, it is estimated, the 1 white of the Union will have increased to only 2,500,000 when : the native population has reached . 30,000,000. v New Zealand Sir Leo dismisses as dounting hardly more than 300,000 : families, its population of about 1,500,000 whites being “ only half as large again as the population of the city of Glasgow.” Unless there is substantial migration from the Old Land, he asserts, the small rate of Ilf increase in th edominions will decline;

t- overseas^' Britain will remain great in area but lamentably small in white population. The competence of Great Britain to supply these migrants, however, even if the dominions Welcomed them, is questioned by the Writer in succeeding paragraphs. Since 1841 the population of Ireland has been reduced by half, to some 4,000,000, and the Scottish population is also declining. In England and Wales the excess of births over deaths last year was only 111,000, and whereas in 1914 the 37,000,000 people in England and Wales had 879,000 children, in 1920 the 39,500,000 had only 644,000 children. “ The average woman has fewer than two children”, and this, in Sir Leo Criozza Money’s opinion, denotes that the English po- : pulation is already, in decline. The significance which he attaches to this position is rather alarming for ■' V the future, of the Empire. The only 4V effective means of possessing the land is by virtue of peopling it, and “the . British Empire contains a number of white people small and insignificant in relation to the area occupied.” The assertion that there is a definite amount of work going, and that by re-

stricting the number of hands to do it there will be more work for those remaining, he characterises as- “ uneco- % nomic ” and “ idiotic.” If the British Empire is to survive,

Sir Leo Chiozza Money says, families must be larger: He does not declare himself in favour of large families,

but of the maintenance of small families averaging l rather more than two children. On the subject of birth con-

trol he expresses an opinion somewhat f similar to that reached at the Lambeth Conference, that “as with most excellent its results are good oi bad according to the degree of its application.”