Aerodromes

Coral Islands As

What America Is Doing In Central Pacific

IT appears that, according to international law, no nation may indefinitely claim ownership of a territory of which it makes no use. A country may not raise its flag over an uninhabited Pacific Island, for instance, and then claim that the island is its possession for all time, when it makes no effort to place people on that island or any attempt to develop its natural resources.

This appears the consideration that is stirring public interest in connection with the ownership of certain very small and hitherto unimportant islands in the Central Pacific.' In last issue, we referred to the case of Howland and Baker Islands, outliers ot the Phoenix Group, which lie on the track of the proposed airmail service between Hawaii and Fiji (or Samoa) and which, consequently, have assumed unexpected importance as possible landing grounds. It was stated that American naval units had landed on Baker and Howland Islands and made investigations, and that the incident had disturbed British official circles, be cause Britain has claimed ownership of the Phoenix Group, including these particular islands, for 60 or 70 years.

It was said to be possible that Britain could not maintain her claim to those islands because they have been for so long uninhabited and undeveloped. But they have not been entirely neglected. The Pacific Phosphate Co. (formerly John T.

Arundel and Co., and the Pacific Islands

Co.) worked several phosphate islands, prior to the discovery in 1900 of phosphate on Nauru and Ocean Islands, and those islands included Howland and Baker Islands, as well as Raine Island, Bunker Island, and Lady Elliott Island.

Similar importance has become attached to three tiny, uninhabited dots of land in the waste of waters between Hawaii and the Marianne Group (Japanese Mandate).

These are Wake Island and its two small neighbours, Peale and Wilk’s Island, and they had been regarded as British. It is reported that an expedition sent out by Pan-American Airways has been busy on Peale Island, laying out a first-class aero drome and airport, complete with hotel, electric light, wireless, etc. A railway, one mile in length, has been laid, and three stores have been built. The work of erect ing an hotel overlooking the lagoon is to commence shortly. A windmill to pump fresh water has been erected and a refrigerating plant is on the spot. Most of this material had to be unloaded from the steamer on to Wilk’s Island, and ferried across to Peale Island, which is a long atoll, only a quarter of a mile wide.

Wilk’s Island is more accessible to steamers, and is only half a mile away across the lagoon, but it has no fresh water, being almost solid rock.

The use of small islands in this fashion seems to make easy the formulation of plans for trans-Pacific air services. There are no such facilities in the Atlantic. In the South Atlantic, for instance, the weekly mail ’plane which crosses that ocean, from Germany and Brazil, alights in the water near a floating aerodrome, the steamship Westfalen, which lies out in the Atlantic, mid-way between Africa and South America.

It has been reported that in order to establish ownership over places which may be as suitable as Peale Island for use as

aerodromes, American naval men have landed and established small settlements of Hawaiians on various small islands southward, as well as westward, of Hawaii.

Sir Murchison Fletcher, K.C.M.G., Gov ernor of Fiji, who has been in England on leave since March, sailed from London for Fiji by the m.v. Port Fairy on July 5.

His Excellency arrived in Suva on August 7.