SIR.-11 was, I believe, Dr. Dudley Stamp who recently stated that, owing to building works, etc., there are now nearly two million fewer acres under cultivation in England than in 1914. In the years to come perhaps another million acres will be swallowed up with power stations, factories, open-cast mining. etc.
In the meantime the population has jumped several millions and evert if it now shows signs of stability (1 do not know if it does), building and industralising are meant to continue, to the detriment of foodproducing land, which brings me to my point. Urntali is on the border of a vast and thinly populated land painted red on the map. To hold this country for the Empire we need more population, as likewise does Australia. New Zealand, etc, At the present rate of house building progress in England the dream of a home of their own for hundreds of thousands will remain a dream and nothing else.
Only yesterday I read in the Rhodesia Herald that the farmers in a certain part of Northern Rhodesia are planning to bring out thousands of Southern Italian peasants; why not English immigrants ? Probably because their standard of living or what passes for it is too high.
Unless many English people are prepared to sacrifice their TN.. cinema and dance-hall-round-thecorner way of life for something harder the present generation of school children will see their history of the British Empire fade away in front of them.
J. KELHAM. P.O. Box 59. Rhodesia Railways, Umtali, S. Rhodesia.