Soldiers

Plan To Use Papuans As

SPANISH nationalist newspapers, in April, under flaring headlines, re ported that the Australian Common wealth Government intends to train na tives in the Australian Mandated Terri tory of New Guinea for defence units.

The article added that Britain now is enlisting cannibals for the English army, insomuch that recruiting is now going on actively in Papua.

When such blatant rubbish appears— as it frequently does in the world’s newspaper press, one despairs of the future of humanity. Actually the Aus tralian Government has been most care ful to take no step which might be con strued as a breach of the New Guinea mandate (which provides that nothing whatever shall be done to arm the na tives or construct fortifications).

Some fortifications have been placed in the Australian Territory of Papua, at Port Moresby, and there is now un der discussion a plan to enlist Papuan native soldiers, who could be of the greatest possible assistance to the Eu ropean garrison stationed now in Port Moresby. It was at first proposed that a labour battalion should be formed in Papua; but military officers have been so impressed with the soldierly smart ness of the Papuan Armed Constabulary that the formation of a few companies of soldiers is now favoured.

The plan has much to commend it.

There is no objection to Papuans being enlisted for service in Papua than there is to the enlistment of Indians in India, or Moors in Morocco.

It may be the voice of Spain that we hear, but it is the propaganda of Goebels. Germany always is howling about the employment of black troops; but one seems to remember that Ger many enlisted very large numbers of black troops in Africa while she was a colonial power—and further, she employ ed them very effectively between 1914 and 1917.