The Daily News. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23. NEW BLOOD.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 218, 23 December 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 23. NEW BLOOD.

The arrival of a .boatload of British peo-1 ple\ in New Zealand, the majority ofi whom will become New Zealanders, is an event of the greatest importance to the community, even though the foolish element of society, as in Wellington recently, make it an occasion for cheap jokes and exhibition of ill manners. The prime essential to the progress and safety of New Zealand is people. It is erroneously held by false political economists that the arrival of an extra workman who will compete with already established workmen constitutes a danger to the latter. New Zealand must for many years Ito come be under-populated, chiefly because the natural increase of the comparatively few people domiciled here is not large enough to constitute a great added strength, and also because the distance from the centres of population is so great that it entails on those who undertake the journey many a wrenck. •It is just as essential to-day that those who leave their homes to begin afresh in a' new and strange land should be imbued with the spirit of pioneering as it was in those distant days when a small trickle of population followed the whalers. The addition to the New Zealand community of one boat-load of strong, healthy Anglo-Saxons is a matter for congratulation, even if only from the point of view that a country which is worth taking is harder to take when there are more men than formerly to protect it. There is yet immense scope for the work of pioneers in New Zealand, and it is safe to say that many of those new arrivals will find strenuous work to hand in the development of a country which is to a very great extent lying fallow, waiting for extra, energy, more muscle, and added' brains to increase a productiveness that is already an object lesson to some other countries, and an example of, what Nature can do, when she is disposed to exert her most beneffcient influences. There is room only in this Dominion for men and women who understand that New Zealand is yet in the making, and who will help to finish the work begun. There is no room at all for the person who, expecting to find a rose-strewn path, steps on a thorn and curses the path. Industry is in its infancy, and commerce in its early youth, vigorous enough but not yet in the fulness of their strength. , To the selfish who view these new arrivals of our own flesh and- blood as interlopers, desiring to decrease the comforts of the few, it may be said that an expressed fear that a newcomer is a rival is. an admission of weakness. The weak must ever go to the wall, .font there is always a place at the top for those who try to get there. The new arrivals come from some islands that are famous for commerce, for freedom and for, wealth. , They have fought the battle of life under the same flag that we in New Zealand fight under, and if they are shifting their camp, they do so merely to make our camp the stronger. It is that they shall help to maike New Zealand as potent in the estimation of the world as Britain is that they come to this outpost of the Empire, and the fact that they are all of our blood, imbued "with our ideals and serving the same end, makes the majority offer them a warm, fraternal greeting. It is good for our insularity that New Zealand's population should be recruited from outside, and it is good for the insularity of those who come that their views shall be broadened and that they shall see and feel the disappointments that mark the road to success. Failures there are in every line of life, who blame a new country for the faults they bring with them to it, and successes there are even in this Dominion who are ready enough to kick the ladder that helped them to eminence. It is necessary and inevitable that New Zealand shall become the home of a very numerous people, and it is of the first importance that those who augment the population shall be of our own color, filled with the same aspirations, and ready to take up and share our special burdens. The presence of one more Anglo-Saxon in the community means that there is much less room for the alien, that a country needing strength is obtaining %, and that this Dominion is better able to develop its enormous resources. Of, late yeaTs there has evolved a wider Imperial knowledge, due unquestionably to the ease and cheapness of travel, It is necessary so that travel shall be easy and cheap that the oceanways shall be guarded. The larger the population of any Imperial outpost is the greater need for this guardianship, and consequently the greater the safety of the Empire. In the constant succession of great ocean liners which bring the newcomers to New Zealand one sees the link that hinds us with those of our blood who are settled in widely-settled land. The ships that bring our friends to us are the greatest of all colonising agencies. The greater the ships and the greater their human freight, the greater must become the Empire under whose flag they steam.