[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In view of the
correspondence which has appeared recently in the Spectator, I am sending you the report of an interview with Dr. J. S. C. Elkington, Director of Tropical Hygiene, Commonwealth Department of Health, Townsville. The occasion of the interview was the publication of a state- ment by Sir George Buchanan unfavourably criticising North Queensland and the Northern Territory as a home for white people. The matter is one of extraordinary interest and im-, portance to Australia and to the whole British Empire, and I trust you will be able to find space, if not for the whole article, at least for very full extracts from it. As a resident of over twenty years' experience in North Queensland I wish to confirm Dr. Elkington's opinion that white labour in
the tropics, particularly British and Australian labour, is far more efficient than coloured labour, and that the climate
has no deteriorating results whatever upon the white race.—
I am, Sir, &c., _ G. A. WALLER. Glenora, Yungaburra, North Queensland.
[The sense of Dr.. Elkington's statement is contained in the following passage :—
" Careful observations show that Northern families neither die out nor degenerate, nor do they show any evidence of commencing degeneration up to the third generation. The tropic-born woman is quite as healthy as the woman born elsewhere. Her children at school ages are taller and heavier than, and at least as mentally able as, children elsewhere in Australia. Life insurance records shew that their chances of longevity are rather greater than else- where in Australia. Industrial records show that they can outwbrk any non-British race in the sugar fields under the ordinary present conditions of living."
—ED. Spectator.]
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