91. It is sometimes said that the last three years of the pre-war 
period were exceptional and must not be taken as a standard. 
The intervention of the war makes it impossible to test the value 
of this statement, which may quite as easily be wrong as right; 
what is certain, however, is that the natural resources of the 
Dominions have not dwindled in the interval and that the gap 
between the figures of those years and the post-war average is in 
any case too wide to be dismissed so summarily. It must be 
remembered that British migration since 1923 has had the benefit 
of assistance under the Empire Settlement Act, while there was no 
such assistance in pre-war years, and that the general decline 
in migration since the war followed upon a complete cessation of 
migration during the war, the natural corollary of which should 
have been a corresponding increase subsequently. Moreover, the 
improvement in the means of communication, including particularly 
wireless, has brought the distant places of the world into closer 
contact. Migration overseas no longer involves the same complete 
separation from home as in the past. 
92. A serious fall in migration, despite the Improvement in means 
of communication, is by itself an important fact, which we should 
have to consider. But when we remember the sparseness of the 
population of Canada and Australia, the reiterated need of these 
Dominions for white settlers for the balanced development of their 
enormous territories and resources, and their expressed prefer- 
ence for settlers from the Mother Country; and, on the other 
hand, the drain caused by unemployment upon the resources of our 
Own country, resources which are required, among other things, to 
guarantee an adequate defence of the Empire, when we remember 
too, the declarations of successive Imperial Conferences on the im- 
portance of migration, an importance deemed sufficient to justify 
the direct intervention of the Governments of the United Kingdom 
and of the Dominions and the passing of the Empire Settlement 
Act in 1922, we cannot but regard the present situation of migra- 
tion as deeply disturbing. 
XI. FACILITIES FOR MIGRATION AND CONDITIONS 
OF ENTRY INTO THE DOMINIONS 
93. Migration to the Dominions may be (a) without assistance 
'b) with assistance under the Empire Settlement Act. 
(a) A physically fit British subject who can pay his own fare 
and has a small sum for landing money can go to the Dominions 
bo take up work subject to the formalities specified in Appen- 
dices II and III. The fare to Canada is £18 15s. (before the 
war it was about £6). Allowing for outfit, landing money, 
expenses on the journey and the sum of money which it is 
only prudent that all British settlers should possess on arrival 
overseas, the amount required for settlement in Canada to-day 
for a single unassisted man or woman is about £40. A mar 
with a fair sized family requires not less than. sav. £150.