“A Mother Does Not Sell Her Children.”

Pacific Frenchmen’s Reply To Argument That France Should Exchange Her Islands Possessions For African Territory.

We are indebted to M. Desmazures, editor of La France Australe (which circu lates in New Caledonia, New Hebrides and Tahiti), for a translation of the statement issued by the “Comite de l'Oceanie Francaise,” concerning the opinions of the French strategist , Rear-Admiral Castex.

The Rear-Admiral has argued that France is not wise in seeking to retain New Caledonia, Tahiti. New Hebrides and Cochin China as part of her Colonial Empire, because they have no economic value, offer few opportunities to Frenchmen seeking a home in the Colonies, and would be impossible to defend against an enemy with strong maritime forces.

A summary of M. Castex’s arguments was published in the June issue of this journal, in support of our opinion that France should exchange those Pacific Islands territories for more valuable lands in Africa. where French colonial interests are predominant, prosperous and much more easily defended. The following extracts from the Comite’s statement give the other side of the question.

M. Desmazures, in his letter to us, says— “The French of New Caledonia intend to offer some resistance in case our Home Government, acting as an unworthy mother, should contemplate the exchange of our native land for others.”

THERE are words which must be killed. It is the same with ideas one might believe to be dead and buried for ever and which return to life after a long oblivion, brought up again by one knows not what flow that follows the ebb which had carried them away.

The idea of selling, bartering, or sur rendering portions of our Colonial em pire is among those. It was lately the absurd suggestion of the President of the Financial Committee of the Ameri can Senate, Mr. MacFadden, to settle the war debts by a transfer of the French and British West Indies.

That scheme, which we had already seen come to light a few years ago, had however, been supremely stigmatised by M. Herriot, declaring from the Chair of the Chamber of Deputies that “a mother does not sell her- children.” The Assembly heard on that occasion the vehement and indignant protests of the representatives of those countries, united to France for the last three centuries, welded to her more by their souls than by their interests and that strength alone could now separate from the mother land.

Now here is the idea launched, a quarter of a century ago, by Onesime Reclus; “Let us abandon Asia, let us take Africa,” taken up again by one of our most subtle-minded statesmen, M.

Joseph Caillaux.

French Africa, no doubt, must be nevertheless the principal axis of our world-wide power, the one which re quires all our care and efforts, and is to enable the constitution of that French-African bloc, the basis of our power for the future. But should we, for that reason, give up our activities in the other parts of the world?

It is the real question which is set and which we shall answer after hav ing set forth the thesis upheld by one of the young chiefs of our Navy, Rear Admiral Castex, in the Third Volume of his “Strategic Theories,” just pub lished.

If the world was governed only by material forces likely to run riot bru tally and unexpectedly, if mankind had not made any progress and concluded treaties to which one cannot deny some value, strategical principles would surely induce us to pre-occupy our minds about a situation fraught with serious perils.

Yet, are we the only; ones to hold

territory thus scattered? Is it not also the case of Great Britain, the Nether lands, Belgium and Portugal? And are not those powers always as strategically exposed as we are? If it takes away but little from the nature of the situation, this fact establishes among those powers a real solidarity,

obvious in its principle, though yet im perfectly realised in their relations and that is a circumstance which should not be overlooked.

It is obvious that we should reply with difficulty to certain attacks—to aggression, for instance, from a yellow nation against our colonies in the Pacific Ocean. But Great Britain and the United States also are not free from such a risk. Yet they are not thinking of withdrawing from their possessions, thus threatened.

As for the fate of our colonies in other likely contests, the last war has taught us that it would be settled at the principal seat of war —in Europe, most likely. It is there we should con centrate all our land and sea forces.

The limited military or naval units we maintain outside the French-African axis cannot cause us to be accused of departing from that principle.

Strategy, we have said, is not all.

Politics have their share. The colonial problem cannot be considered solely from either the military or mercantile point of view. Our possessions are not lifeless pieces on some vast chess board, nor business houses which we could sell owing to a liquidation, or after having made a fortune.

Are we to be seriously asked to abandon territories, nowadays mostly inhabited by French people, such as New Caledonia, where 20,000 of our own folks have settled in answer to the call of our administrators and our gov ernors?

The flag flying over our distant lands covers no longer the mere possession of countries submitted to the sweating system. It has become the symbol of a tutelage which we freely fulfil on behalf of a principle of a superior civil isation. We have in that respect a twofold moral duty to fulfil; to bring up to it the peoples of whom we claimed to be the educators, and to make mankind take advantage of the wealth of those territories.

This idea of a mission, which hence forth is attached to our colonial under takings, is incompatible with thoughts of exchange or transfer, inspired by the antique notion of barter and that independently from any sentimentalism.

Still other reasons are opposed to it.

Does wisdom consist, as Goethe said, in placing oneself above events, with out ever mixing with them. We re member having learnt, in our youth, to comment on that maxim, but to prove how false it is. France has been, is still, and we think she expects to remain so, a great nation. She must be present wherever great world-wide interests are agitated. She cannot fol low the policy of falling back, which in most cases, would mean a policy of renouncement.

To abstain, outside the segment of our planet considered above, from any interference, any action, were it of moderation or conciliation, undertaken with a pacific or civilising spirit, would be indeed to abdicate, and that France cannot do.

As if it was not enough to hear Ger many openly and untiringly claim her pre-war colonies, and to read in foreign newspapers allusions to renewed sug gestions about the transfer of our col onies, we must hear Frenchmen can didly propose to return her former ter ritories to Germany or to recommend, now for equivocal reasons, now for pusillanimous reasons, the exchange or the surrender pf some of our posses sions.