An Awakening In The Pacific

JN 1930, when the Pacific Islands Monthly was established “to give pub licity service to the Territories of the Pacific,” the majority of people—even those in eastern Australia and northern New Zealand—had a very hazy know ledge of the various groups. “The Islands” were regarded as a pleasant, shadowy region, where persons of roman tic temperament dallied under the droning palms, while Polynesian maids of ardent habits decorated them with frangipanni flowers. Even well-informed newspapers published appalling tosh, which served merely to colour the imaginative picture.

Since then, extraordinary changes have occurred. The development of the gold mining industry in New Guinea, Papua, Fiji and the Solomons has made those ter ritories well known in Australia and New Zealand. The establishment of great aeroplane services in New Guinea, and the planning of trans-Pacific air-lines, have caused commercial and financial in terests suddenly to awaken to the economic

importance of the Islands territories. They have discovered that these are not mere elysian groups of coral islets; but huge land masses, immensely fertile, and en dowed with almost incalculable mineral wealth.

Simultaneously, there has come to the Powers a realisation of the political and strategical importance of the Pacific ter ritories. Sooner or later, there may be a struggle for dominance of the Pacific; and, in that event, the possession of cer tain island groups will confer advantages.

Within five years, the Pacific will be criss-crossed with air-lines; and, in this connection, ownership of lands, even of very limited area, is being eagerly sought.

Australia, especially, is awakening to the strategical value of New Guinea, Solo mons, New Hebrides, and New Cale donia, which serve as a protective screen between the Commonwealth and certain possibilities of the Northern and Central Pacific.

But the real importance of these Pacific

islands lies in their economic value, for purposes of agricultural development. For far too long it has been said of them that they are “too isolated, too small, too hot for white settlement.” All that, in a phrase, is utter nonsense. Certain islands, like the Gilbert and Ellice Colony, or the Cook Group, are too small and scat tered to be capable of organised develop ment; but New Guinea, Papua, Solo mons, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and Tahiti, from the point of view of tropical agriculture, are in the same category as the East and West Indies. These are not mere “islands”— for the most part, they are large terri tories, with mountain systems, good rivers and innumerable sheltered harbours.

New Guinea and Solomons, with their lofty peaks, enormous rivers and malarial jungles, are rather terrifying places; yet they are, climatically and in many other ways, comparable with Java and Suma tra, which the Dutch have colonised so successfully. Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, being further south, are free from fever, and Europeans may live permanently there and develop their unlimited agricul tural possibilities. In that way, they are

comparable with the best territories of the rich West Indies. The C.S.R. Co. already has demonstrated that Fiji may become another Cuba.

In recent weeks. Pacific Islands affairs have received more attention from the newspapers of all nations than ever before.

It is recognised that, if these tropical ter ritories are going to be held in the face of the international situation, they must be developed, and receive “a fair deal.”

There is some indication that a long period of indifference and stagnation is coming to an end.