The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, AUGUST 26, 1946 NOT FROM BRITAIN

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 16, 26 August 1946, Page 4

The Bay of Plenty Beacon Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. MONDAY, AUGUST 26, 1946 NOT FROM BRITAIN

ANY talk of population increase at once prompts the question of where the immigrants would come from. At least nine out of ten New Zealanders would look to the British Isles, as heretofore, but there is good reason to believe that the numbers we could expect from the Mother Country would be few. Britain, indeed, is faced with a population problem of her own. She is committed to a policy of full employment, which will remove the main incentive in the past for her people to emigrate; she needs more than ever to be strong, which envisages great industrial expansion; and her young and energetic citizens are wanted, and wanted urgently, to be the parents of a new and more prolific generation, to carry the burden of an ageing* population and to defend the country in times of national emergency. Britain’s people today are her best assets and she cannot afford to export them in any numbers. In fact, the attitude of the British people today toward large-scale migration is summed up in the words o?Sir Josiah Childs in 1693: “Whatever tends to the depopulation of a kingdom tends to the impoverishment of it.” If the converse holds eqfially true for New Zealand—and it certainly does for our sister nation across the Tasman —our problem then is where our immigrants are to come from. Experience teaches that temperamentally and physically peoples of Nordic stock are best suited to New Zealand conditions, being hardy, adaptable, of good character and temperament, and essentially practical. Big development schemes lie ahead if New Zealand is to expand, and the influx of population must be comprised largely of artisans,, technicians and people who are prepared to do the essential “dirty jobs” about which today there seems to be a foolish snobbishness. It is interesting to note that the founder of the first Danish Association of New Zealand, Mr E. A. Dahl, in evidence before the Parliamentary Committee said that 95 per cent, of his countrymen between the ages of 18 and 40 “want to get out into the world, and many have New Zealand in mind.” Unless we are prepared to accommodate these potential immigrants within a reasonably short time, the cream of them will have been lost to us. ' .