a Defence Link

New Guinea's Value as a Defence Link

nPHE N.S.W. Congress of the Returned Soldiers’ League in Sydney in Sep tember urged that Australia’s mandate in New Guinea should be terminated and the Mandated Territory proclaimed Com monwealth territory. Captain G. D.

Mitchell declared that Australia needed a barrier to link up with Singapore and help to prevent invasion from the north.

The motion had been advocated by re turned soldiers in New Guinea.

Colonel Murphy said that Australia held New Guinea as a trusteeship by a mandate from the League of Nations. It was exactly because she needed them for her own defence that Japan, in withdraw ing from the League, had said she was determined to keep the Pacific Islands over which she held a mandate. He asked were they proposing that Australia should put herself in the same position as Japan?

The Congress also recorded its strong opposition to the return to Germany of the colonies lost in the Great War. One delegate said that in view of the develop ments of modern air warfare, it would be dangerous for former colonies, con tiguous to British dominions to be re turned to Germany lest they should be converted into air bases.

Mr. Cecil Abel, of the Kwato Mission, Samarai, recently returned to Capua after a visit to England.

Mr. Torao Wakamatsu, Consul-General for Japan at Sydney, has received authority empowering him to exercise jurisdiction in respect of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, the Solomons Protectorate, Tonga, the New Hebrides, and other islands under the High Commission for the Western Pacific, according to a notice in the W.P.H.C. Gazette issued in Suva recently.

Mr. N. A. Pyne, late Collector of Cus toms of Tonga, who resigned to take up the secretaryship of Panels Pty. Ltd., Sydney, is now renewing old Islands associations by importing large quan tities of New Guinea logs and timbers into Australia.

Colonel and Mrs. J. Walstab, of Rabaul, returned to New Guinea in September, after a visit to England.