EMPIRE MIGRATION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 May 1944, Page 4

EMPIRE MIGRATION

EARLY CONSIDERATION BY DOMINIONS ■ ARRANGED AT PREMIERS’ CONFERENCE. I STATEMENT BY LORD CRANBORNE. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.30 a.m.) RUGBY, May 24. Dealing with the Government’s plans regarding immigration within the Empire, the Dominions Secretary, Lord Cranborne, said: “It was definitely agreed at the Prime Minister’s meeting that the Dominions governments should give early consideration to the position, directly after the return of their Prime Ministers, and , after that they will communicate with us as to further steps to be taken.” “We made it abundantly clear,” Lord Cranborne added, “that despite the fact that our own population is tending to decrease rather than to increase, yet on broad Imperial lines we feel we should encourage and assist as far as possible inter-imperial migration, if it is desired by the Dominions governments themselves, on the necessary assumption that these governments are prepared to make their own contribution to a scheme to assist migration.”

Saying that, in view of the Dominions’ own problems of demobilisation, caution was called for, Lord Cranborne added: ‘‘There is abundant evidence that all these Dominions, especially Australia and New Zealand, will be ready to take British migrants as far as is in any way possible, and I think that a very encouraging feature of the meeting.” Definite decisions had not been possible, Lord Cranborne said, but it was essential that there should be an exchange of views in preparation for a further advance.