The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 10, 1911. "TOO FASTIDIOUS.".

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 164, 10 January 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 10, 1911. "TOO FASTIDIOUS.".

Tlie opinions of the London Tiines ar# ijlways interesting, because of the power the paper has always wielded. Its eminent respectability and its honesty of purpose are reasons why British people are frequently led by it. In dealing with colonial matters the Times very frequently appears as a critic, whose criticisms it is difficult to find fault with, the assumption being that its sources pf information are most reliable. In •recently remarking that the Commonwealth defence policy had been removed, from the sphere of partisanship, the paper uses the remark -on whieh to base a sermonette on Australia's immigration policy or lack of it. The first suggestion is that the policy is not yet removed from the sphere of partisanship. One of the facts the Times was too polite to mention is that Australia is much too immersed in party politics and the struggle to keep office to tackle the chief need, people for the empty spaces, and the partisanship occurs when politicians are so dominated by labor cliques as to discountenance the arrival of considerable bodies of workers. The excuse in Australia—and a like excuse is frequently trotted out in empty New Zealand —is that newcomers will upset the labor market. "The big manger with the little dog" is probably the best description of Australia, and its attitude towards immigration that has been devised. Tke point that ought to hit the collection of dogs in the manger is that there will some day be no British manger in Australia at all, if every labor's howl to keep blood and sinew out of the country is listened to. The Times mentions that Australia is too fastidious about the class of immigrant that is being invited to the country. This fastidiousness might be presumed to have an effect in reducing crime. But it has not. A mixed community over which pernicketty authorities had not "passed the tape" would be much more likely to shake down into useful citizens than small detachments carefully passed by a few nominees of a Labor Government interested in keeping the working population at the lowest possible level in order that Bill Jones or Charlie Green should not be done out of a job. The Times touched a point that it is very necessary should be touched when it mentioned that Australia must learn that it is not conferring a favor on immigrants by allowing them to enter. Both New Zealand and Australia should take off their hats to every robust man and woman of white color who consents to live in either country. In the (lavs that may not be far distant, New Zealand and Australia will not depend for their safety oil whether A is Prime Minister or B head of the

Tourist Department, but whether there are enough robust people in the countries to prevent alienation. A Commonwealth Government, or a Dominion Government, which places tlie question of immigration next to the cutting up of the land, and worries at it night and day, forgetting party wrangling and themselves for a moment, woidd be unpopular, but might do work of a character that would save Australasia to the white race. "Empty territory is a perpetual temptation to nations whose territory is inconveniently restricted." By all the precedents there is nothing that is not intensely human in the people of a crowded country taking the whole or part of an empty land. Jt is not a question of labor organisation, or of beating a man for a job, or any'such foolishness. It is a question of keeping the country in which the job is situated.