SOMETHING WRONG

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 140, 11 December 1930, Page 9

SOMETHING WRONG

tf&ST EMPTY SPACES

£"Rom "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, sth September. Speaking at a meeting of the Boyal Empiro Society somo time ago Mrs. David C. Lamb (wife of Commissioner Lamb, of the Salvation Army) said that she believed, if the Government gave her husband a free hand, he would solve the question of migration. She implied —though she did not- say so—that migration and the spending of the millions set apart for it was the work of business men and not of politicians. Commissioner Lamb, in an "Open Letter to the Imperial Conference," in the September issue of the "Empire Review," returns to the attack. ''The present condition of Empire affairs," he says, "is a danger, a scandal, and a reproach not only to professional statesmen but also to the com-mon-sense of the British race. In the Homeland there are tens of thousands of able-bodied men and women being maintained in idleness, while in the overseas Dominions vast areas of rich lands, valuable fisheries, immense forests, great mineral deposits lie undeveloped. "Surely a people who continue to anake so little use of the unexampled heritage which is theirs do not deserve —and can scarcely justify any claim to —Its possession. Since tho Armistice the Empire has spent probably one thousand million pounds (£1,000,000,000) on. maintaining able-bodied mem and ■women in idleness. What a reflectionon our genius for organisation—and what a heritage! The very fact that, at present, there is woi-ld unemployment and that the oversea Dominions themselves are confronted with passing problems of stagnation points to the unique position which the British Empire occupies." Commissioner Lamb quotes from a letter of a distinguished American financier and business man. The American says:— "Your dole payments are bringing your country into a terrible condition. Your salvation will consist, first, in making your Dominions and colonies prosperous. This you will do by givi7ig them the preference over the United States. They can practically ail give you the same things as we do, except where we send you manufactured goods that you do not want.' Secondly, by stopping the dole and assisting emigrants to the various colonies. At tho present moment practically all the Doruiiiions would object to receiving emigrants, especially of the type that have been demoralised by living on. the dole, but if you can create a condition in ■which prosperity will create a demand for labour, they will undoubtedly gladly assist by receiving the proper emigrants, and you will not increase your expenditures if you apply the dole fund to emigration."

"It may be," Commissioner Lamb continues, "that our sense of proportion is affected by our immediate environment. London is apt to dull our estimate of the truo conditions. Visitors are glamoured with its greatness, its busy life, and its gaieties. There is at present comparatively less unemployment in London than in the provinces. Its 7 per cent, of unemployed is virtually unseen. Outside of London, in some districts, tho unemployment figure is nearly 30 per cent. The percentage alone is dreadful; when actually seen. in localities of comparatively small population 'it is positively ghastly.' Such, indeed, was tho summing up of the Prince of Wales when on a visit to one of the distressed areas in the North of England.

"The Prime Minister of New Zealand (aided by his staff) will represent less than one and a half millions of people (men, "women, and children), but the Homeland army of 2,000,000 able-bodied men and women out of work —albeit wage slaves but with votes and political power, nevertheless—will not now have even a Minister speaking for thc-m! . "What has tho Imperial Conference a,t its disposal? The 'right-ofway' in everything! As trustees of our great heritage, wo shall look to you, as perhaps never before, for action. No one will grndgo you a full share of the social functions which will fall to your Jot, and for which you never asked and would probably bo well pleased to " bo excused. Let the newspapers have their interviews, real and imaginary, and you all. those things so inseparably associated with so important a gathering as an Imperial Conference, but may I express the hope that 'the humanities' of the situation will be considered paramount. "We seem to be manacled by an economic dogma. We pay out vast sums in doles, a negative and demoralising enterprise; and, at the same time, we undertake the most meagre expenditure to help some of our teeming millions to go out, to develop, and to enjoy their inheritance. If the 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 be economically right. Equally, what is morally right ought to be economically sound. It is when we divorce our fconomics from our morals that we create difficulties. Our forefathers did not sail the seas with ledgers tinder their arms, but. their moral worth «Poim<ied the Enrpipe." '