The Sun WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1928 THE RIGHT IMMIGRANT

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 279, 15 February 1928, Page 8

The Sun WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1928 THE RIGHT IMMIGRANT

IT is possible tliat the Rt. Hon. L. S. Amery will be caught off his alert guard one of these days and say something worth while about his tour of the Empire. So far, the Secretary of State for the Dominions has decorated the “All-Red Route” from the Waimakariri to Westminster with gracious platitudes and charming compliments; but hardly ever a word with the pith of useful polities in it has come from the stored riches of his impressions and his resourceful vocabulary. It looks as though someone had told him before setting out on a record journey for an English statesman “to be nice to them over there, but for God’s sake don’t tell them anything about our politics and policy”! There is really nothing thrilling in the latest report from London telling how Mr. Amery, undoubtedly one of the Empire’s ablest administrators, delighted a conference of newspaper men with “three-quarters of an hour of happy phrase-making” about his great trip around the Empire. It was to be expected that he would enjoy the educative tour, appreciate the lavish hospitality of Australia and New Zealand, and see everywhere “notable manifestations of the development of a more vigorous national spirit in the Dominions and their desire for expansion within the Empire.” But these things are real and assured of permanence; what is still uncertain is the method by which the high virtue of a vigorous national spirit is to be brought to greater expansion for the good of the whole Empire. On this supremely important subject the various “ambassadors of Empire” say very little or nothing at all. It has to be hailed with lively appreciation, however, that in one instance at any rate, Mr. Amery has broken fresh ground, and actually, though still cautiously, ventured a new impression. This is his declared belief that British manufacturers have a good opportunity to establish branches in Australia, adding that by so doing they would directly assist migration. With complete confidence and political safety, the Dominions’ Secretary might well have gone the length of saying that there is ample scope, indeed attractive scope, in each one of the four Dominions for the establishment of industries by British manufacturers. Such was the outstanding lesson Mr. Baldwin learnt in Canada where the inrush of American capital and American directorial control, is causing erosion of the wall of British nationalism; this is the lesson impressed most deeply on the receptive mind of Mr. Amery. The right kind of immigrant wanted in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, is the resourceful, competent industrialist with capital and confidence in the great future of the Dominions. Of course, it is hard and difficult to liberate British politicians and British industrial capitalists from the traditional fetters of Free Trade and the idea of easy fortunes in exports and external investments, but soon or later the ghost of Cobden will cease to haunt British politics. It is clever to say with Mr. Amery that it would be useful to give some preliminary farm training to prospective migrants from England to the Dominions in order that “a newcomer should not face a farmer as a fool,” but what is the use of training town-dwellers for farm work in the Dominions where a life of drudgery without many splendid prospects of financial independence is driving immigrants and Dominion-bred men off the land into the cities already overcrowded with unemployed?