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Show BRITON SEEMS TO HAVE LOST "GRIP" No Longer Feels Urge to Settle New Lands. A hundred years or more ago Englishmen Eng-lishmen were swarming to every cor-rier cor-rier of the earth, taking over and populating vast stretches of new land, until it was possible as Indeed it may still be possible to say that there were more English-speaking peoples than there were those of any other tongue. In the last generation or two there has been a change. Britain still controls con-trols much of the vast areas of the earth. But Englishmen are no longer long-er filling them up. Australia, despite de-spite its continental extent, remains a sparsely populated land, with most of the people concentrated in a few cities along the eastern coast. England Eng-land proper teems with men and women unable to find work to do. but the old urge to get out and try what, a new country can offer is gone. Officialdom, in both the motherland and in the colonies, seeks to revive the old swarming spirit. But with small success: The story published ln the morning papers is typical. Nearly 100,000 Englishmen who had been persuaded to move to Australia have petitioned the British government govern-ment to repatriate them. They charge that they were induced to leave their homes by "mischievous, misleading and untruthful propaganda" propagan-da" circulated by paid agents of the Australian government and they tell a sad story of disappointment, starvation star-vation and despair. What is probably prob-ably more suggestive, they tell also that many of their numbers have become be-come mentally deranged and that suicide is frequent;. On this point AVarren S. Thompson, Thomp-son, in his famous book, "Danger Spots in World Population," has a stimulating discussion. At certain periods in their history nations tend to "swarm," like bees, and "the facts seem to show that only 'swarming' agriculturalists with a rather low standard of living can actually settle set-tle a new land." But an industrialized industrial-ized people, such as the English have become, gradually ceases to swarm. It ceases to be able to settle and develop de-velop new lands, for the city life to which it has become accustomed renders ren-ders it unfit to master the soil. Such people, says Thompson, "can exploit certain of its accumulated resources, but ... they are like, the people peo-ple of the fabled Island who lived by taking in one another's washings." The troubles the expatriated Englishmen Eng-lishmen are having in Australia and the similar troubles some of their fellows have had in Canada are simply sim-ply cases in point. If the new lands nominally under the control of the British empire are soon to be filled, it will probably be with other folk than Englishmen from the industrialized industri-alized mother country. Baltimore Evening Sun. |