EMPIRE MIGRATION

which gives rise to a shortage of capital equipment will also give
rise to aft urge to migrate on the part of those—especially young
people—who cannot in consequence find at once the economic
and social lodgment that they regard as their due. Even the slight
recent rise in the human productivity rate will lend an increased
marginal importance to that factor. And, so long as conscription
remains, 'demobilization5 will continue to affect a quarter of a
million young men yearly in Great Britain, plus those discharged
each year from the Regular Forces. These young men are likely
to be much readier to think of migration than were their fellows
of the same age before the war, who would already have been in
jobs or on the road to them through higher education.

If, then, the potential migrants are there—at say an average
of 100,000 a year—and the Dominions want them, as they now
say they do, what should be the policy of the United Kingdom
Government: to permit, to encourage, or to restrain the potential
migration? Britain cannot afford to be bountiful with her human
assets, which represent her future earning power. If there is to be
any Governmental subsidy to migration in the Empire, it should
not be she who pays for any of it. A man who is giving away stocks
and shares—which he can ill spare—to his sons and daughters can
legitimately expect them to pay the brokerage and transfer fees.
Indeed, as has been suggested, if it can be done without offensive
political implications, it would be equitable and -in accordance
with realities if credit were given, against British war debts, for
human assets transferred towards their redemption.

But there are wider considerations. The economic and social
debilitation caused by migration in excess of a due fraction of a
country's national increase is bad enough; is it not an even more
serious matter that the country's military strength should thus
seep away—especially when it discharges far greater military
responsibilities in the world at large, in ratio to population, than
do the countries acquiring the new citizens? Is there not thus a net
loss of strength to the British Commonwealth, in a highly danger-
ous world? The argument is that men and women who might
serve in the Forces, or manufacture the things that the Forces need
in peace and war, are desperately needed in Britain to help fulfil
her role as a Great Power in the world and as the principal de-

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