Future Of New

Hebrides

Apparently Little Hope of Change

FT was reported during April, by the * London correspondent of an Austra lian newspaper that, while the future of the Condominium in the New Hebrides is listed for consideration at the Imperial Conference in May and June, it is not expected that any real advance will be made.

It is said that “Britain is determined to conserve to the full her rights and interests, and not to accept any altera tion in her present status—although she will seek to maintain her present very friendly relations with her French partner.” It is also said that “it is known that France will never accept any proposal to sell out or exchange her holding, so that Britain might hand over the islands to Australian control.”

All of which presents a dismal out look for the few remaining ill-treated and neglected British settlers in the New Hebrides.

It does not seem more than a decade since Mr. Nicholas Hagen went to Lon don, with practically all the authority necessary to sell the French interests in the New Hebrides to the Australian Government. But the Australian Gov ernment, being ruled at the time by politicians who thought that New Heb rides was the name of a new kind of psychological complex, would not seri ously consider the proposal. Most of the gentlemen concerned in that decision have gone, deservedly, into the obscurity from which they came, so there is little use now in jeering at them for their shortsightedness.