OUR WORLDWIDE EMPIRE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3461, 28 February 1912, Page 7

OUR WORLDWIDE EMPIRE.

THREE TIMES AS LARGE AS EUROPE. . ’ Addressing a juvenile audience, under the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society, on “Our World-wide Empire,” Mr W. Garrison said the British Empire was six times the size of the Roman Empire under Augustus, three times the size of the Chinese Empire to-day, and half as large again as the Russian Empire. It was three times a large as Europe and 125 times the size of the Motherland. It comprised 121- million square miles of territory, and it embraced over 400 million people, representing a quarter of the population of the globe. To show the vastness of the British Possessions maps were first displayed, and the enormous figures of population and production were given, with a brief description of the many and varied industries carried on in different parts of th.e Empire. The lantern slides depicted the chief cities and many noteworthy geographical features of the Oversea Dominions, Colonies and Dependenicies, corn harvesting and threshing, sheep farming, tea planting, sugar and banana cultivation, rubber growing, timber pulping, cod fishing, salmon canning, and numerous other typical industries, with portraits of prominent Empire builders. A suggestion that anyone seeking the suffrages of a constituency in Great Britain should, as a preliminary, be obliged to travel through at least one of the great Oversea Dominions was rereived with marked approval, as also was the proposal that those who contemplated emigration from the United Kingdom should ge to one or other of th« British States, where there is plenty of elbow room, and remain under the old Hag rather than go to foreign countries.