STAMPEDE TO THE DOMINIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, 8 November 1919, Page 9

STAMPEDE TO THE DOMINIONS.

"WHERE S1MB& ENGLASiD NOW? ■WHIM! 'HEE DOMEKB33fS London, Sept. 5. Eeaoe Troth lior -problems no less than Avar, and migration of peoples wiilun and without tlffe Empire is a jraz/Jiug one from wihichever side of the Line it be viewed. The stay-at-homes, in spite of themselves, have been thrust out of the Homeland to every kind of country and clime. They have discovered tliat other countries hare their good qualities, mayhap even their attractions. The contrary stream of men from Dominion [Forces towards the centrS of the Em- ! pire has irrigated England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. What the colonial contingent did after the South Airican War has been repeated, and on an infinitely larger scale. The men from our far-flung Empire have breathed into the still sterling qualities of the old stock here a spirit of freer faith, of fresher thought. New Zealand has always had the foresight to realise that to attract hordes of immigrants promiscuously is a policy to avoid- The Dominion has always been content to attract men -worthy of its citizenship—to'prefer quality in its immigrants to quantity. And the policy ias paid, as witness what the public thinks here. There is no more universal opinion to be met in the Old Council than that the New liealander in the khaki—and isn't he typical of the whole Dominion *—is of the colonial forces the pick. Australia forgot to hasten slowly. The result you can see in the streets of London to-day. The Australian soldiers—in bulk—are of* a rougher, less orderly type than the New Zealander. To quote a popular daily: "Whatever the Teason, large masses of the population are forming the view that existence in otheT lands offers better chances x«an in Britain. . . . Skilled workmen, hearing of substantial wages in the Dominions and the States, are resolved to secure settled and peaceful conditions of labor, and to come out high and dry from a sea of taxation and shindies. Unfortunately (for the Old Country, ot course) the wonld-be emigrants do not comprise a large proportion," it goes on to say, "of that class described as having left their country for their country's good. Though the yeoman and rural laborer class is not as prominent among them as in days, the reason being fairly obvious in agricultures newfound prosperity, the more thoughtful and more earnest of our artisan classes | are seeking new homes across the sea." Here, then, is New Zealand's opportunity. This is the class of emigrant the Dominion has always welcomed. Distance has hitherto been somewhat of a bar to New Zealand's attracting many of the fewer artisans willing to leave the Old Country. Now that this class is more anxious to go farther afield in the. Emniyp, New Zealand should secure its quota. And I am mistaken if it dons not. No more effective propaganda could have been set in motion tnnu that of letting loose in the United Kingdom of our thousands of diggers, who have gone up and down the count rvside. literallv from Land's End to John o' Groats, in their own proper persons the best advertisement of the Dominion thev all laud as "the best ever," as ''Cod's Own Country.''

So the topic of the moment is the stampede to the Dominions. Government's action in granting passages to war workers' irrespective of sex is. of course, helping to swell the stream. Men and women who have become minued with the desire for a newer country would in many cases have given up the desire.of their hearts because of the difficulties—monetary and other —of its achievement. Th« offer of transport to any of the British Dominions in removing one difficulty adds another ti routary to the outward stream. But just because these new tributaries to the stream of emigration from the Old Country are of a better class than hitherto, the noor Old Country, what of her? AH this bone and' sinew of Britain is going to build up the young dominions. Only the lack of passenger accommodation is, keeping tlie stream within bounds as yet. "When accommodation does become normal," Faid a leading ('migration authority in Liverpool, "there is likely to be a stampede to the boat*." Every one of the Dominions will have to be on ths qui vivo if its interests arc to be uphold. Propaganda is not enough. Facilities must be available else the stream towards the Antipodes set in motion here will be blocked at its source, or what trickles .through when the bulk of the manpower available lias been diverted to other dominions will be muddy.

The Old Country is not as decadent ] as it is thought, and there's life even in its leisured and leisurely classes. Some of this life is even now on the way to exploit newer lands, not always tTiose under our flag. A whole party of ex officers are leaving to try their fortune in America. They are all young, mo-'tly round about the thirties, and of that lively branch of the service, the K.A.F. The originator of the scheme. Rrijrartierj General A. C. Critchley, R.A.F., is proprietor of a large estate in Central America, where cotton, wheat, and fruit are cultivated, cattle, horses, and sheep are reared, timber and rubber are produced. The ranch is the last word in modern equipment, even to possessing wireless installations and aeroplanes. It is the centre of a great sporting area, and the members are going out fully equipped with all the shooting irons necessary to make life pleasant to sportsmen, even in the intervals of the hard work of ranching. Some of your sporting fliers might 'plane over to have a look at this enterprise!

Sufficient lias been said to indicate, if only in skeleton outline, that' migration within and without the Empire is no longer the simple matter it formerly was. One has only to point to the tact that the U S.A. is for the first time in its history experiencing an outward stream from among its foreign population, particularly its Slavic settlers, a movement which Canada also is experiencing. Canada, however, is not worrying overmuch about this movement towards Europe. On the contrary, it boasts this week that its immigration from all countries was SO per cent, ahead of last year, a figure that is, of course, quite, illusory, since it is conceivable that its bona fide immigration in the last year of the war may have been a very small number, What is » more substantial boast is tliat Canada has already put more than' 50 per cent, more returned soldiers on the land than Australia. New Zealand, Great, Britain, and the U.S.A. combined, and that it has given to returned soldiers more than a million acres of land