EMPIRE POPULATIONS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 August 1938, Page 2

EMPIRE POPULATIONS

— DECLINE CAUSING ALARM. A report prepared by the Overseas Settlement Board of the British Government expresses alarm at the decline in the Empire’s white populations. The British dominions are the most thinly peopled, and, for their resources most undeveloped regions of the world’s surface. Canada, with its 3,600,000 square miles, has a population at most of 10,000,000, or fewer than three people to the square mile. The United States, which adjoins Canada, has more than 120,000,000 people. Australia, with 3,000,000 square miles, has fewer than 7,000,000 people, or little more than two people to the square mile. New Zealand, the most densely-populated of the British dominions, has 1,600,000 people, or 15 to the square mile.

The Union of South Africa has fewer than 2,000,000 of a white population. Against these facts must be reckoned the other facts that there are countries in Europe, such as Germany, Italy, and Belgium, that are overcrowded; that in Asia, Japan proper has a population of more than 70,000,000, China possibly 400,000,000, India 350,000,000, and Java 40,000,000. All these countries are looking for outlets to send their surplus population.