The Daily News. THURSDAY, MAY 4, 1911. DOING OUR SHARE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 292, 4 May 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, MAY 4, 1911. DOING OUR SHARE.

At the present time in New Zealand, domestic servants are more tha? Dreadnoughts, and farm laborers of greater consequence than torpedo boats. The modern disposition to regard machinery u.s of more consequence than flesh and blood leads politicians into mazes. Even our own Prime Minister is apparently apt in his exuberance to prescribe lyddite shells and cordite as the chief panacea for all Imperial troubles. Lately Sir Joseph Ward, stating that there were thirteen millions in the British overseas dominions, held that if each dominion took its share of the burden of defence the dominions themselves could build fifty Dreadnoughts. The ability of the dominions to build Dreadnoughts is no criterion of the ability of the dominions to man them. There is as yet no compulsory naval service within the dominions, and few have seen any necessity for placing so tremendous a burden on infant communities. The Prime Minister apparently refrained from saying within what time the dominions could build these warships, and he also apparently forgot the man part of the machine. Dreadnoughts won't fight by themselves. A warship without a crew i.s as useful as a bogged traction engine a hundred miles from the nearest fuel. Although our Prime Minister spoke as an Imperial statesman, New Zealanders are entitled to regard him as their particular mouthpiece. Tf the New Zealander knows anything, he knows that this 'country wants men before machinery, and women rather than 14-inch guns. New Zealand i.s less concerned with the future than the Now. It remembers that although there may be thirteen millions of people in the oversea dominions there are only one thirteenth of that number in this country. While any section of the community Is antagonistic to the entry of large numbers of outsiders; while there is a passion for centralisation, and while there is a noticeable decrease in many places of the child crop, neither it nor its mouthpiece has a right to speak as if it were a thickly peopled continent, able and willing, not to talk in an exalted strain, but to prove physically (without quoting figures) its ability to look after itself. The prescient statesman capable of expressing the feelings of the people he speaks for would see that his country's chief need was not that its few people should pay larger sums of borrowed money for problematical protection, but for many strong bodies and acute brains to make protection sure. We believe that the New Zealand public man who has the courage to admit that his genius is better employed as an immigration agent than as an advocate of naval exten-ion —a necessary, but secondary consideration—will do more for empty dominions than by demanding more complete representation. "We

want Dreadnoughts!" We want ploughmen first., "Wo want an Imperial Council!" Wc want servant girls more urgently. "We should spend several million pounds in the next few years in order to protect New Zealand!" We should spend nil the energy we can command to attract a million people, so that we may have the money to spend without borrowing it. In our view, the man who, despite such antagonism, is trying to send a trickle of English men or boys to this country is doing the right kind of flag waving. The women who induce white girls to come to Now Zealand arc good friends of the country. In many parts of New Zealand, as recently pointed out by Mr. T. E. Sedgwick, work remains undone because there are insufficient hands to do it. The hands that do the work are the hands that will light for the country. If the country is unsafe, it is not in danger because New Zealandcrs do not contribute sufficient to the navy, but because there are too few New Zealanders. Somebody said the other day that many parts of New Zealand were "only scratched." The way to increase the revenue, and to plough instead of scratchiag a new country is to build more dreadnoughts. In order to raise the money to build more dreadnoughts refrain from speaking of our greatest need and draw on the best material of the population to man them. To people the land set up an Imperial Council. To grow wool and potatoes, flax,'butter and cheese, wave a flag. To induce intensive cultivation, let outsiders know that land in New Zealand is given away, so that when they arrive they will And it largely a medium for speculation. It is high time the world understood that New Zealand is a small community engaged in earning its daily bread, and not a densely populated continent whose people breakfast on dreadnoughts, lunch on cordite, and dine on Union Jacks. People discuss grass more frequently than Empire Parliaments, sheep oftener than warships, the price of pigs nnd the scarcity of labor and the next harvest more than the Japanese invasion, and domestic, matters more interestedly than new loans. No one in this country doubts the reasonableness of the contention that the Imperial Navy must remain the bupreme fighting machine' of the world. But no one, if he thinks a moment, wants warships rather than people. New Zealand at present is of no international importance. It is of supreme importance only to New Zealanders, and the most important work to which the energy of the people of the dominion can bo turned is to breed New Zealanders and to attract outsiders who will become New Zealandcrs. The peopling of the land is the best kind of patriotism. To attract one hundred people to New Zealand is better patriotism than extracting one pound per head out of one hundred people now here. To man the farmsteads is as truly defensive an operation as manning a warship for problematical defence. It may be very spectacular for an infant to don the harness of an adult, but it cripples the infant Now Zealand wants more inches on its chest before it leaves off talking about scows and speaks in Dreadnougfits. A period of quiet concentration, tireless work, increase from within and without, will prepare for any threatened conflict better than promises to borrow some more gold from John Bull to protect unborn millions.