The Daily News. TUESDAY, APRIL 11. "ALL-BRITISH."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 275, 11 April 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, APRIL 11. "ALL-BRITISH."

Sir Joseph Ward Ims been telling the Canadians that their immigration policy is not what it ought to be, and that in effect Canada should take example by New Zealand. At least Canada has a real policy. Our Premier found fault with Canada's admission of ''non-British" people. On Wednesday last it was reported that a number of Syrians had landed in New Zealand, having passed the necessary education and health tests. We do not believe that New Zealanders desire to keep all "nou-British" people out of New Zealand, but merely to put difficulties in the way of the landing of colored aliens and undesirables. The casual reader, who cares to peruse the lists of school children published from time to time in New Zealand papers, will observe a large proportion of foreign names. The country would have been the loser had the parents of these children been prevented from coming to this country. In New Zealand there are large numbers of people of foreign blood and of excellent type. We rarely have any trouble with the Slavic settler in the north; it is uncommon to see a German name in the police reports; we have Swiss and. Italian, French, Swede and Norwegian people, while Danish communities have helped New Zealand in a very marked degree. The point is that these European "non-Britishers" become New Zealanders with New Zealand ideals. Their children are New Zeals nders. The peasant stock of Europe is one of the finest possible stocks on which to graft a nation. A dominion welcoming sturdy white men of all nations is doing the right thing. We are being constantly taught by the foreigner and in our turn we teach him. In every line of life in this country the colonial youth of foreign parentage can be found "keeping his end up" with the offspring of British parents. The Taranaki citizen has only to look down a list of athletes to note the constant recurrence of foreign names. In fact, he need look no farther than the nomination lists for chopping and sawing carnivals. New Zealand wants good white men, good white women and good white children, whether they havs been born on the continent of Europe or in the British Isles. The foreigner coming to New Zealand, as a general thing, desires naturalisation, and obtains if. Australia is wonderfully cosmopolitan. It has never asked that the groat island continent shall be "all-British" as far as the inhabitants are concerned, but merely that it shall be "a white Australia." Australia did not object when Swiss and French and German people invaded it and showed them how to make vine-growing pay. It would have been very foolish to prevent our German cousins from tackling sugar-growing in Queensland, where, using highly intelligent methods, they are helping to tight tropical diseases —a fight, by the way, that will end in making equatorial lands habitable to Europeans, and who will after prolonged settlement become physically fitted to resist climatic influences. Australia does not cast a shearer adrift because he is a Swede or a Norwegian, nor do bush contractors refuse the help of stalwart axemen because they were born in Russia. In Tasmania there are communities of Italian workers of the best physical description. Tt is a jo)* to see the gaiety of these sunny people in the big gum forests. They are eontent, law-abiding, and have brought their peasant carefulness with them. A little wine and water, some fat bacon and "black" bread, and the Italian liushman in Tasmania works from daylight to dark and sings himself to sleep. There is no occasion to ask him to stay outside Australasia because he is non-British. He sends home for his wife, too, very

often, and the children are just as proud to be called Australians as are the children of the Englishman, Scotsman, Irishman or Welshman. In New Zealand ' there are whole colonies of white foreigners. There are hundreds of Croatians in the far north, large numbers of the, best . types of Scandinavians in Hawke's Bay, | and a miniature seaside "Naples" not far | from the capital. If we had excluded i "non-British" people, we should have ex- I eluded some of our brightest public men, otir gum trade would have died out, we | should have scorned the poor land in the north, we should have known practically nothing about wine-growing, and out butter business would not have been on so sound a basis. The fact that the majority of foreigners are successful in Australasia is the best reason for welcoming them. In helping themselves they help New Zealanders. Most of them on leaving Europe for British dominions leave Europe finally, and their allegiance to their native country ceases. They enter the British Brotherhood, and the brotherhood ought to be glad to get them. If it were provable that the white foreigner in New Zealand had been a j menace, or was likely to become one, | it would be reasonable to talk about the prohibition of non-British immigrants. It is, however, provable that the majority become determined colonists, are eager for naturalisation, are law-abiding, industrious, shrewd and provident. New Zealand and Australia owe much of their vigor to the cosmopolitan nature of their peoples. The United States of America could not have become so great an example of progress had the country been closed to the "non-British." The States were never so foolish. All new countries want new blood, new brains, new thoughts, fresh ideas. Obscure communities which resent the introduction of strangers are always unprogressive and behindhand in the race of life. It is an axiom that the man who has lived on a gold reef for forty years, knows nothing about it until the outsider pegs it out. The coming of the outsider gives a fillip to the "stick-in-the-mud.'' Rivalry is good exercise, and the foreign element in Australasia has spurred a very payable rivalry into existence. Let them all ; come as long >as they are white and strong and law-abiding! New Zealand , will be glad of them all some day.