The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 1929 THE GLOOMY SCOT

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 608, 9 March 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 1929 THE GLOOMY SCOT

MANY Scotsmen on the wilder side of the Border (as elsewhere, of course) are exercising their barbed gift of telling disagreeable truths in their own remorseless way. They are gloomily bitter and savage over the Empire problem of migration. There appears to be good reason for their had temper. A million Scots have left their native heath since the beginning of this century to seek fortune in other lands, confident of success wherever they might find these enduring aids—a steady billet, a savings bank and a kirk. Together with those of their countrymen who roved outward before them, they have roamed so far, and, like their own thistle, multiplied so well, as to have inspired a Sassenach writer to observe that the British Empire should be known as the Scottish Empire. If Englishmen had emigrated at the same rate in the same period England’s emigration total to-day would stand at 7,000,000! But Englishmen are more content to bide at home. They have a softer country and a cheaper brew. There must be some such explanation of the fact that in the five bad years, 1922-1926, the population of England and Wales, rose by 900,000, while that of Scotland fell by 700. No one need retort slyly that these figures suggest that Scotland must be a poor country to live in, a good country to leave. It has its bonnie allurements. So much, perhaps, has been said about poverty and porridge, to say nothing at all about mist and a wailing music, that alien critics know very little about Scotland’s home-baked scones, heather honey, Ayrshire beef, and many another delight, forbye. And yonder in the Highlands, ayont carse and clachan, “river and loch and sea cool the eyes and fill the ears with the peace of moving water —a land of waste spaces, but the wild rose runs triumphing, there are birken bowers in the greenwood, and Beauty’s feet are wonderful on every violet mountain and desolate moor.” But Scotland’s proKlem of migration is too prosaic for poetic solution. The cause of the Scot’s gloom touches the core of patriotism. In the hard years that questing Scotsmen have gone abroad, their places have been taken in the Lowlands by no fewer than 700,000 Irish immigrants. Clydeside threatens to become an oversea province of the Irish Free State, just as Ulster once was a similar “possession” of Scotland. To-day, a bitter fight is raging over the effects of the exchange. The heather is on fire. And the Scottish Nationalists naturally are making the most of its worst phases. They are perturbed at what Sydney Smith used to call “the great Irish industry of manufacturing children.” Here, in this happier land of tolerance and smug comfort, where blackthorns and broadswords merely are relics of ancient feuds, a cooler view of the controversy may be taken. If the Scot be gloomy on the bristling question, he is glum because (to quote enraged controversialists in Scotland), “while the emigrant Scot lias been more than making good in Melbourne and Shanghai, in Ontario and in Cape Colony, the country he has abandoned has become a land of slums and unpeopled wastes, a land that is bleeding seaward, a land which, in the midst of its wounds and its squalors, confronts the world with the complacent grin of an incorrigible delusion.” That, of course, is a grotesque picture of Scotland, and one of the worst ways that Scotsmen take in telling disagreeable truths. A liberal discount must be allowed for political fervour. One of the virtues or failings of most Scotsmen is their flair for taking politics too seriously. They want progress and believe, perhaps too simply, that the right kind of national progress, outside things spiritual, can be best achieved by political action. Their faith, no doubt, is the result of having been nurtured on the rich politics of Gladstone, Rosebery, and Lord Oxford and Asquith. And it is rather hard to be patient with the new sort of statesmanship that has for its national symbol a briar pipe.

It is difficult to see how Home Rule with a Scottish Parliament would solve the problem of migration. There was a time, only seven years ago, when Scotsmen had a unique opportunity to put the United Kingdom exactly and completely right. A Scotsman was Prime Minister and another was Leader of the Opposition. What happened? They became so engrossed with telling one another disagreeable truths that a magnificent chance for the achievement of a perfect triumph in the practice of political wisdom passed by. The best method of control appears to be either an English leader’s soothing guidance of Scotland or a Scotsman’s political dominance over England. Meanwhile, Scotland is no nearer a pleasant solution of her dual problem of Scottish emigration and Irish immigration. Even our United Government’s theory about settling all difficulties by the settlement of the unemployed on small holdings has failed dismally in Scotland, though there the cost of placing a family on a small farm is only £3OO, while here a similar enterprise will cost £1.500 or £2,000. The gloomy Scot? Why, even the most genial New Zealander would soon lose his geniality if he had to work and live like a Highland crofter.