PEOPLING AUSTRALIA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 815, 17 March 1910, Page 3

PEOPLING AUSTRALIA.

The greatest, as well as the most pressing, problem that confronts the statesmen of Australia is how to people wisely and rapidly the vast continent whose destiny they are permitted to shape. Not only is it a problem inseparably linked with its economic development, but it is one upon which its national safety very largely depends. In the re-awakening of Asia, in the filling up of Europe, and the aggressive ambitions that are stirring the minds of its Governments, there lurk dangers of Australia that at any moment may become very real and overpowering. The time, therefore, has come when an adequate effort must be made to attract a large and steady stream of immigrants. Sir George Reid, the High Commissioner of the Commonwealth, who has arrived in Loudon, touched on this point when interviewed by the representatives of the metropolitan press. “We must have,” he said, ‘‘a vigorous system of immigration of people belonging to the rural classes.” In other words, Australia must have its vacant laud settled. The difficulty is to induce people to go to Australia rather than to Canada. The Commonwealth is handicapped in many ways. Being more remote from the Mother Country, it is more expensive to reach. Vast areas of the continent are subject to parching heat and periodical droughts. Owing to fundamental differences ol policy, the Commonwealth is unable to offer the allurements that are drawing so many thousands of agriculturists to Canada. For many years the Dominion must continue to be the great magnet. But in spite of its drawbacks, Australia possesses attractions of its own, which, were they better known at Home, would, we firmly believe, lead to a large influx of desirable immigrants. What the Governments both ol the Commonwealth and New Zealand have been slow to learn is that it is not mere acres that make a country great, but their occupation and productiveness. Less than twenty years ago Oklahoma had no inhabitants except a few Indians, just as great tracts of New Zealand to-day have no inhabitants save a handful of Maoris. It was a barren waste, unknown, unpeopled. To-day it carries a population of 1,500,000. It is crossed by 5000 miles of railways, and 700 banks provide for its commercial needs. Had Oklahoma been in New Zealand it would still have been a waste.