6 AUGUST 1932, Page 12

Country Life

LITTLE FARM EmIGRANTS.

In the offices of the Western Australian Government I met last week two score of very small children, all munching very red Australian apples, with much satisfaction. They were a group of boys and girls from seven years of age upwards—and not very far upwards—who were about to start for the Fair- bridge school and farm in Western Australia. They were being given a send-off by that kind and energetic Cornishman, Mr. Angwin, who is Agent-General. The little emigrants, most of them orphans or from very big families of paor arents, come from any and every part of England. They form the raw material of what has for years seemed to me nearest to Imperial manufacture. They illustrate the best sort of way of transferring people from an over-crowded part of the Empire to an over-empty part. The place was founded by a saint whom the Empire should canonize—at any rate in spirit ; and like many idealists (and indeed mystics) he found a practical matrix for his great idea.