The Press Wednesday, November 30, 1937. Mr Amery.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19171, 30 November 1927, Page 8

The Press Wednesday, November 30, 1937. Mr Amery.

It would be much easier to welcome Mr Amery to Canterbury if he had not already had so many New Zealand welcomes, and were a distinguished visitor and nothing more. We are embarrassed on the one hand by his office and mission, and on the other by the fact that he knows where our New Zealand hearts are, and always have been, and in a very real sense, therefore, is not a visitor at all. We are aware also of respects in which he knows more about us than we do ourselves, since he has not been able to take anything about us—unless perhaps our good intentions—for granted. And then there is the further fact, which we all deeply deplore but have not been able to escape, that we must do and say everything in one day. If it were not that Mr Amery is accompanied by Mrs Amery, whom we welcome not merely as Mrs Amery, but as an independent student of Empire, the case would be worse still, since the problems of Empire are as much women's as men's, and almost, from the emigrant's standpoint, more so. And we do not suppose, either in Canterbury or anywhere else in the Dominion, that the Imperial Government has no real anxieties about New Zealand, and has sent Mr Amery here chiefly to show us a courtesy. There is courtesy involved, as we know and deeply appreciate, but we know also that the Empire's real problem is the distribution of its population, and that this is as much our problem as anybody's. It might indeed be urged, and with much justice and force, that New Zealand is not less concerned with immigration than the other Dominions, but more, since we not only owe the Homeland everything, but are actually so near to it, except in miles, that just now, when the flow of voluntary migration is being held back by vague doubts and fears, we are in the best position for starting it again. In another part of this issue of The Press a correspondent suggests that if, for example, Home and Dominion Churches exchanged ministers for a year or two "a liaison would be formed between "two parishes" which (for church people) would remove " the fear of the " unknown and the' fear of loneliness"; and that is true. But by comparison with most of the other Dominions New Zealand has already formed such a liaison by modelling itself on the Homeland, and carrying on almost the same life under different skies. It is not merely the Britain of the South, but the nearest thing.to Britain anywhere on earth, and the Dominion therefore which could, and should, be extending the warmest welcome to immigrants.