Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 1911. KEEPING THE CRADLES FULL.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10270, 24 June 1911, Page 4

Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 1911. KEEPING THE CRADLES FULL.

One of the most awkward" problems which will have to be-faced in New Zealand, amd in other parts'of the British Empire, in the immediate future, wild be that of preventing the decline of the species. The official records of this Dominion show a condition in regard to population, which is by no means re-assuring. Writing in the Outlook, ex-Prosadent Roosevelt asks the significant and all-important question, "Will English and French, with empty nurseries, give way to German and Slay?" The decline, of the birth-rate in France began fifty or sixty years ago, and has continued to such a point that the French race in France for the last decade has been actually decreasing in numbers, the population of France being kept practically level only by the" higher birth-rat© among immigrants', chiefly Italians and Germans. Among the English-ispeakiing peoples there lias long been much complacent pointing at France as a nation that no longer held its own among tthe peoples of the earth. As a matter of fact, the English-ispeaking people have now all entered on the same course which France has followed, until year by year she has become less amd less able to rank as the equal of Germany. Moreover, the decla'ne in the birth-rate among the English-speaking peoples ha-s pro-

eeeded at an even more rapid rate than in France itself. Mr Roosevelt tliinks that one of the strangest and. saddest features in the who 1 !© sad business is that the decline has been most marked in the very places where one would expect to see the abounding vigour or' the race most strikingly displayed. He sees no warrant' whatever in economic conditions in Australia and New Zealand for a. limitation, of the birthrate, and the course of events in these great new countries demonstrates beyond possibility of refutation that the decline: in the birthrate is not due to economic forces, and has no relation whatsoever to hard conditions of living. He points out that New Zealand is as large as Great Britain, and as fertile, and that its population is between onethirtieth and one-fourtieth of that of the United Kingdom,, while it is composed of the sous and grandsons of the most enterprising and adventurous people in the Old Country. New Zealand people, he says, have realised to an 'extraordinary, degree the institutional and industrial ambitions of democracy every where; yet the rate of natural increase in New Zealand is actually lower than in Great Britain, and has tended ; steadily to decrease. The Australians are .sparsely scattered over the fringe of the, great island continent, a. continent which could support, I without the slightest difficulty, ten- ! fold the .present population, and at the same time raise the general standard of well-being. Yet its sparse population tends to concentrate an great cities of disproportionate size compared to the country population, just exactly as is tlhie case in England and the United States, and in so manv of the countries of Europe ; -and it increases so slowly that, even if the present rate were mamtadned, the ".population would not double itself in the next century; while, if the rate of decrease of the last decade continiues, the papulation will have become stationary by the middle of the century. If this is so, then Mr Roosevelt thinks . that th« men mho rally round the battlecry of "A White Australia" have indeed ground for anxiety, _ as they think of the teeming millions steadily increasing north of them in Asia. The ex-President points out that in private life no man can permanently hold land of which be mates no use, and in the life of nations it is absolutely certain that in the end no race can" hold a territory save on condition of developing and popuiat ing it.