THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 1910. THE PERIL OF AUSTRALIA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9695, 20 January 1910, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 1910. THE PERIL OF AUSTRALIA.

The "Standard of Empire" draws attention to the peril that Australia is exposed to owing to the meagreness of her population. The corn, the wool, the wine, the gold, the sea fisheries of Australia are gifts which this fortunate nation has inherited without bloodshed or those dire struggles which leave their mark upon future generations. Yet over all this happiness there rests one deep shadow. The Australians are too few in numbers to make full use of the assets which might be theirs. Their potential riches remain very largely undeveloped because there are too few hands to garner them. Australia might be—it ought to be—one of the greatest nations of the world. But ft is not that, except on the map There, indeed, it looms gigantic. Take up that irregular circle of red from the Southern seas and drop it upon Europe, and it would blot out Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Italy and Spain, and still have overlapping space. But, judging by population, Australia is not one of the great nations. It is, indeed, one of the smallest. The people of the Commonwealth have hardly as yet possessed their own great island. They are a mere fringe of

population, sparsely strewn along the sea coast too few in number even to hold that rim except in dots and patches. Five millions of inhabitants at present own an area that could support a hundred millions, and still be far more thinly populated than any State of Western Europe. It is a dan gerous, even a ridiculous, situa tion, and we do not wonder that it rouses anxiety anong thoughtful Australians. There is every reason why it should do so. Australia's vast and fertile solitudes must inevitably attract the cupidity of other nations, N teeming with esurient mouths clutching hands, unless Australia can herself both occupy and I defend them; and how can she do either .the one or the other with her present quite inadequate stock of huiwan beings? At her present rate of stagnating increase it will be past the middle of the century before she numbers eight millions of citizens. By that time Japan will have sixty or seventy millions, the United States nearly a hundred and fifty millions, Germany and Austria perhaps an equal, China anything up to , four hundred or five hundred millions. ! In the face of such figures Australia cannot afford to be a very small nation; she may arm and drill all her adult males, but they might still be too few to resist the forces that ' might be arrayed against her foi warlike conquest, or the more insidious D'ocess, of economic attack. It if vital to the very existence of Ausi tralia that she should add rapidly ti the number of her white inhabitants