Transfer Surplus Population Prominent Historian and Economist Urges that Sparsely-Settled Portions of Globe be Systematically Settled by Britishers. November 1 1924 SIR JOHN A. R. MARRIOTT Transfer Surplus Population SIR JOHN A. R. MARRIOTT NATURE abhors a vacuum,” was the wording of an old saw; but Sir John A. R. Marriott, M.P., writing for the Fortnightly Review, uses Lord Northcliffe’s adaption of it to the human element, when the latter declared that “the world will not tolerate an empty or a sparsely-settled country.” In other words, there never was and never can be barriers devised which will prevent excess of population in one section of the globe from flowing to lands where there is more room to breathe and live. From this Sir John draws the useful moral that if the British dominions and the motherland do not speed up and encourage settlement of old country people in the dominions the latter will be over-run by other races less desirable.