BRITISH EMPIRE.

Waikato Times, Volume 121, Issue 20253, 23 July 1937, Page 10

BRITISH EMPIRE.

GERMAN VIEWPOINT. “SPACE WITHOUT PEOPLE.’* German comments upon the Imperial Conference seek to represent the British Empire as a vast, under-popu-lated area in contrast with Germany, which Is depicted as an over-crowded country (says the Berlin correspondent of the Manchester Guardian). The Nazi Angriff draws a dark picture of the population problems of the British Empire, even Ireland, in the paper’s view, being in need of increased numbers. Quoting from recent parliamentary speeches, the Angriff tells its readers that Great Britain can spare but few people for emigration to the Empire, and that her population will fall within a century to 20,000,000. Australia Is described as a vaouum, while the British stock in Canada Is being submerged. The Angriff reoords that more people have in later years returned from the Empire to the Homeland than have settled in the Empire. It goes

“The British world Empire is a spaoe Avlthout people. For even in South Africa and Ireland the condi- , tlons are similar, while even in New Zealand and Newfoundland more people oould be nourished than at present by proper exploitation of the existing possibilities. The Motherland cannot provide emigrants in large numbers. “Quite apart from defence questions, the Dominions must raise their populations if they wish to be economically healthy. A oomplete transformation of previous population policy must bo the consequence. There cannot fail to be reactions upon the English attitude in the colonial question.” Points Overlooked. The Nazi order does not, hoxvever, point out that in a whole series of other countries besides those of the British Empire the population is stable or is declining; nor that in the United States the tendency during the slump year Avas for emigrants to return to their homes, while immigration was checked; nor that even in France alien workers had to leaA : e the country, while in Germany itself seasonal foreign labour, like the Polish agricultural Avorkers, Avere cut down and finally more or less stopped. The Essen National Zeitung, in a much more penetrating study of the Imperial Conference, deals with some of the same points. It mentions Australia in particular as a “space without people” which sees itself threatened by Japan, but appreciates the Avide scope of British policy, comparing the Foreign Office to an observatory for recording the world’s earthquakes. England’s answer to Italy’s Abyssinian conquest and to the re-armament of Germany is British rearmament. England’s policy, it goes on, is to gain the Dominions over for a Joint armaments programme. The development of the air arm has taken away from England the character of an island. A sixth part of the earth’s surface has come closer to Europe, says the newspaper, and only a Joint Empire polioy can servo as a counter-weight to this