"OUR HERITAGE"

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 55, 2 September 1926, Page 15

"OUR HERITAGE"

« COMMISSIONER LAMB ON HIS TOUR A PRACTICAL MIGRATION SCHEME NO INSISTENT CALL FROM DOMINIONS. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, loth July. It is not- often that great publicity is given to the proceedings of the Eoyal Colonial Institute. When Commissioner D. C. Lamb spoke this week on "Empire Settlement" it was perhaps natural that his remarks should go no further than the walls of the lectureroom. Not a single representative of the London Press was present. Following the editorial custom of measuring the importance of a meeting by the rank of the speaker, and of considering the Colonial Institute rather as a debating society, the Press certainly made a mistake. One hears in London a great deal of vapouring from people i: high positions on the subject of the redistribution of the population that it is a treat sometimes to hear a man with wide practical experience of his subject. Commissioner Lamb, who has returned from his tour of the Empire, does not mince matters, and probably he was not accused of so doing when he spoke in the Dominions. "It is not a question of money," he said. "It is a question of the absorbing powers of the overseas Dominions. They have got to get busy. They are not giving an insistent call for new settlers, and wo have got to keep on agitating." Commissioner Lamb proposed a practical scheme for getting on with the work of migration. "Wo must develop the long view or perish,' he said. "Wo aro living in mortal dread of consequences, our impulses are checked by dogma.'' "Throughout our wanderings," ho said, "we have been received always with the utmost cordiality and kindness by everybody in authority, in Canada, in. New Zealand, in Australia, and in South Africa. We have had, too, a good Press, but better than both of these we have found everywhere that tho Empire was still the groat touchstone of Dominion life, and tiiat in private conversation and in public speech my text — 'Out Heritage: The Empire'—referred to not as a possession secured by military force and naval supremacy, but as the free legacy of free people, never failed to stir a warm and understanding response. "TJnder-population in the Dominions, with its corollary of under-production, and over-populatiou at Home in the industrial areas with its corollary of unemployment are facts that should bo considered together. To me it seems that the two evils are capable of a single cure. Hitherto, whenever this question of peopling the Empire has been approached—and has it ever been approached with imagination and courage? —conclusions have been clogged and stultified by an undue regard to nerveless and unyielding .economic theories. We have made a god of economics, and our burnt offerings havo got us nothing. I say, let us have a little wholesome heresy in this matter. Our pioneer* sailed on no economic star. Their ballast.was not blue books; nor were pounds, shillings, and pence inscribed "Upjori;.t|ietr-canvas. Wo .have.forgotten what they taught us—how to adventure. We have grown, to a pitch where we attempt to audit our accounts before wo make our expenditure. That is not the big, nor the generous, nor the heroic view, and to hand on to our successors their rightful heritage of an Empire compact of free and prosperous peoples, it is big and geiferous and heroic that we must be. DEMORALISING EXPENDITURE. . "We have an implement the Empire Settlement Act, it is true, but have we sought determinedly to inculcate the land-sense in our young people, to develop the latent domestic quality in the woman factory worker; to train in agricultural industry such of an urban population as may seek an opportunity of settling on the land-over-seas? We have paid great sums in doles and in relief; wo have Poplar and West Ham; and tho Empire Settlement Act provides for the Homo Government spending not more than £3,000,----000 in one financial year, exclusive of the amount of any sums, received by way of interest or repayment of advances previously made. Looking, at it dispassionately, on one side these vast outpourings of money to no productive end, and,on the other the stabilisation and maintenance intact of our Empire: doea not this agreed expenditure seem tragically small? We are, as I have said, and as thiß Act discloses, manacled in Imperial matters by an economic dogma. We pay out this vast sum— £500,000,000—in doles, a negative and demoralising enterprise; and at tho same time, as tho figures show, we undertake tho most meagre expenditure to help some of our teeming millions to go out, to develop, and to enjoy their inheritance. If tho moral law is applicable to such a state of affairs, and it is applicable, it can only discover and display a weakness in our system, and what is morally wrong cannot bo economically right. "The Empire Settlemeut Act allows us, that is, the Home Government, to spend on the conditions quoted, £3,000,000 in one financial year. This is our legalised financial contribution towards the'transplanting and sottlement of our people within the Empire, a fraction of the unproductive coal subsidy, a very meagre fraction of what has been spent in relief of one sort and another sinco tho Armistice. By this Act wo take part in a system of half shares with the Dominions. Let us pause again and view as a business proposition that arrangement in tho light of what wo do, not to improve things at Home for our unemployed people, but to keep them going, to maintain them just above tho destitution level. This is an investment. Have we not put our money into the wrong market? Nobody who invests money looks for a return to-morrow. Tho investor, a very different person to the gambler, looks for a market wherefrom he will derive a reasonable and dependable return. AVhafc return is there from all this negativo expenditure? Doles-do not produce dividends. It is tho method of investment that needs revision. THE ECONOMIC STUMBLING BLOCK. "We have these undeveloped resources overseas and theso unemployed at home—not uncmployablosf they are a proposition in themselves —anil we agree to spend, going half shares, £3,000,000 annually on the one, and heaven knows how much on the other. We do not, in fact, even spond the agreed £3,000,000. And there is the Dominion side. If the half share is more than tho several Dominions aro jat present in a position to furnish, can there be in all the circumstances cited, and in view of the urgency of tho Imperial problem, a sound sustainable objection to our share being increased, to our making the sum, if need be, 100 per cent, of what is wanted? AVhich in short we must have if the Empire is to be handed on intact, free, and flourishing to succeeding generations of our people in an Imperial sense—not to be

confounded with Jingo Imperialism, as acute as our domestic sense. Wo want a generous scheme of migration and settlement, free of false sentiment. It must bo beneficial to tho individual, helpful to the Old Country, and acceptable to the Dominions. Failing in one of those particulars it will fail in all, and with it wo must have the long view, a scheme spread over years, a schemo that looks for concrete results, not to-morrow, but in ten, in twenty years' time—not a long period in the life of a nation.' In the Dominions as at Home we have got to get over tho economic stumbling block; wo must, I repeat, look beyond immediate concrete returns, but budget for the distant but not less certain harvest. A PRACTICAL SCHEME. "For tho purposes of peace shall we d& less than we did, with little enough preparation, for the purposes of war? If men and women can be shown that overseas there awaits them a job and a welcome, they will be willing enough to go. But they must not go untrained. It is for us to provide the means of training, and that itself must be part of our general schemo worked out in consultation with the Dominions. And while such training is in progress and the men are not earning, let their wives have the dole to enable them to carry on: the period would not bo long. So that it comes to this: let us first drastically amend the Empire Settlement Act, 1922, on the lines indicated; amend the Unemployment Insurance Act so that tho Government can pay the dole to tho wife and family of a man while ho is training for farm work overseas; develop a ton years' programme of intensive emigration; provide a big scale system of training for potential emigrants, especially lads and young men; and create a Commission to carry out the last two of these proposals. ACT OB GO OUT OF THE RACE. "Let me say with absolute solemnity," Commissioner Lamb concluded, "that I bolieve that wo have reached a, point in our, Imperial career when we must choose between action and disaster. Have we still tho spirit to accept the challenge of our under-populated Dominions? Can wo and will we develop in this matter a 'super-economic' point of view? It matters very little when a child is learning to walk which foot it advances first so long as the other speedily follows. Tho economic log in this caso has had too much exercise, it has become developed at the expense of the other, the humanitarian. Let tho two tako equal and regular strides and carry tho British Empire steadily on. So far we have moved like a cripple, but let us use both legs ana speed up. We must act or go out of the race." 85, Fleet street.