PERPETUATION OF BRITISH BLOOD.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 8, Issue 132, 7 June 1916, Page 4

PERPETUATION OF BRITISH BLOOD.

i The mission of Sir Rider Haggard in New Zeaalnd and, in fact, in other outlying portions of the Empire he has visited, is a conscientious and, therefore, a noble one, as it is self-imposed and honorary. In the work he has undertaken he is not the paid advocate of any political party or class; he is the voice, purely and simply, of those in Britain who are anxious that not on e soldier shall suffer unnecesssarily through the risk he has taken for his King and Country. From the closeness of his home to the sea from which Germany ha s dealt many blows at British hom 6 life, no one is likely to appraise the voluntary defenders of Britain at a higher value than Sir Rider Haggard, and, naturally, he has thought, and thought deeply, of what is going to happen to the millions of brave fellows after they set foot on their own land after war is over. He profoundly realises the need our Em*'ire has of man that is left alive to us. and he is prepared to give "icntlis of his time and go to great expense in an effort to conserve our returning soldiers to the Empire. It is believed, rightly or wrongly, that Mm task of putting so many millions back into employment will be a task ra colossal as to be impossible of performance, and that unless the Dominions eve, prepared to take a part in the work the men will drift in large numbers to other countries, particularly to America, and will become lost to us for all time; and Sir Rider Haggard is taking this aspect ,of the war up as a fluty —as his war work. He considers that great dangers lay ahead; when the dangers break they must be ready to meet them; and he believes it can be done in no better way than in seeing that all the great countries that compose the Empire are as well populated as they can be. He points out that heretofore tens of thousands have emigrated to the United States, the Argentine and other places; but those who thought with him said that every suitable man who left England’s shores should settle in the other Englands over seas, there to increase and perpetuate their blood. It is for this reason he is going round the world to see what reception these men would receive in the Dominions. Sir Rider Haggard has met with considerable success in the various outlying portions of the Empire he has visited. He, no doubt, has fully recog-

nised that in those countries -he was I most likely to meet with success was wher e there was size, and enormous ' areas still unsettled. Here, in New Zealand, he has encountered conditions somewhat different. ,We are experiencing a land famine, a land hun- ' ger, among 1 - our own people that our Government cannot or will not satisfy,

| and to land other land-famished men ! amongst us would render present suffering more extreme. There is one aspect of Sir Rider Haggard’s visit that may be the subject of many excellent, pertinent and useful writings, and it will, at least, disclose to us the idiocy of a policy of land aggregation; a policy that, looking through this great imperialist’s glasses, we can see spells calamity in this young country. Our population is increasing at a very slow rate, and then only by the arrival of shiploads of cosmopolitans, while the sons of our good settlers are leaving in large numbers for Australia, Argentine, South Africa, and other places where it is possible to get land with comparative ease; where they are encouraged to take up land, and where it is not sold to them at famine prices. If Sir Rider Haggard brings home to us the fact that we are doing just what is diametrically opposed to our best interests, recovery, and continuity of British blood, he will have put New Zealand under a debt of gratitude that it can never repay. While Britain and her great men realise the necessity for land on which to perpetuate British blood; while men in this country are hungering for a bit of land on which to pernetuate British blood, what has our Government done, and what is it still doing? It is allowing aliens, Germans, Austrians and others to aggregate, to mop up, that which every patriot knows is

needed to desperation, for the perpetuation of British blood. Our Government, since it came into the conduct of our affairs, has exhibited a calamitous crassness in this respect. They have no idea or thought about perpetuating British blood, the blood of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, that is now being poured out freely to save the land in this country for the Germans and other aliens to whom the Government is giving it in huge areas while our own sons are waiting and famishing for it; flinging the idea of perpetuating British blood to the winds or to hades, and cultivating th e spread of German and alien blood that is going to enslave us in the end; nurturing and nursing the viper that i s trying to destroy the virility of British blood and render its perpetuation in this beautiful New Zealand an impossibility if the power is not snatched from them before the mischief they have worked does not become irreparable. On this account we extend the heartiest and most sincere welcome to Sir Rider Haggard and his mission. If he gets no land for British soldiers, there is a possibility that he may cause us to see the error of cur ways; and the vital need of conserving our land for the perpetuation of British blood.