Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JULY 13 1938. DEVELOPING THE EMPIRE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 July 1938, Page 6

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JULY 13 1938. DEVELOPING THE EMPIRE.

JT is good news that the Empire Development Congress, which has resumed in London, has decided to appoint a council, on a permanent basis,- “with the object of co-ordinating public opinion in an effort concerning the need for Empire development.” The language here used is a little involved, but the object indicated is excellent. A permanent body, constituted to interest itself actively and persistently in the development of the Empire, should become a valuable asset. In constituting the council, however, it should be recognised that bold action on a big scale is needed if the problem of developing the Empire is to be attacked at all hopefully. Some fairly ambitious effort- in the comparatively recent past, under the head of migration and in other categories, have proved to be entirely inadequate.

The development of the Empire on lines enabling it to carry a much greater white population would soon be lifted from the classification of things that ought to be done, but are not done, if the problems involved were approached with something like the resolution and the free call upon public resources, that characterise, for example, the rearmament programme in which impressive progress is now being made in the United Kingdom.

There is no question of putting the rearmament programme and the development of the overseas Empire in any respect into opposition to one another. They are in facts parts of one great task—that of so organising the Empire that its people may enjoy security and prosperity. Neither is it in doubt that rearmament in Britain, with co-ordinated action in the Dominions, has at present supreme claims to attention. In face of such developments of policy as are taking shape today in a number of European countries, any British Government would be failing in its elementary duty if it did not press forward in rearmament with all possible energy. Common prudence demands, also, that every Dominion should follow the lead of the Mother Country in this matter in the extent which its means and opportunities permit. It has yet to be demonstrated, however, that even with rearmament, in full progress it is not open to the British nation —that is to say, to the people of Britain and those of the Dominions —to combine in a planned use of their available resources which would greatly expedite the development and peopling of the overseas Empire. Step by step, as population and production expand in the Dominions, the Empire will be strengthened. On ' a basis of liberal democracy it is undoubtedly open to us to surpass and improve upon anything that has been accomplished in the past in the way of nation building, because we are in a position today to profit by all that a study of the past can teach us. Assuming always that we are content to concentrate upon essentials of human and national welfare, the progressive expansion of balanced production, and of population, in the overseas Empire should present no insuperable difficulty. There is need, however, of a bold departure from conservative ideas and prejudices before a policy of Empire development on these lines can be planned and carried into effect. The days when the development of the Empire meant the settlement of empty or sparsely populated lands have gone by. Development in the Dominions from this time forward must mean in the main a varied establishment and expansion of industry. With an organised pooling of British and Dominion resources to that end, rapid progress undoubtedly might be made. Success demands, however, that efforts should be concentrated as definitely and as intelligently upon the expansion of industries in the Dominions as they are being concentrated in Britain at present upon the production at record speed of fightingships and aircraft and everything else which the rearmament programme comprehends. We have had in the past too many organisations which have tinkered and talked amiably about the problems of Empire development. An almost untouched opportunity presents itself to the council now constituted of concentrating practical attention upon these problems and contributing to a co-ordinated effort to bring them to solution.