Henri Sautot

Career of New French Governor

rE new Governor of New Caledonia, M. Henri Sautot, whose dramatic arrival in Noumea on Sentember 19 is described elsewhere, joined the French Colonial Service at Dakar, Senegal, in 1908, as a civil service clerk. He entered the Corps of Adminstrateurs Colonial in 1914, and altogether served for 20 years in French West Africa, including Maure tania and Dahomey, where he came into contact for the first time with English administration (in Nigeria). From 1928 to 1932 he was Governor of the cod-fishing islands of St. Pierre et Miquelon, off New foundland.

Then he was sent to the Pacific as Resident Commissioner in the New Hebrides, where he arrived on April 23, 1933, on the same vessel which brought Governor Siadous to New Caledonia.

From 1935 to 1937, he was Acting-Gov ernor in Tahiti, afterwards returning to the Hebrides. He went to France on leave in 1938, returning in March of 1939. Under him, Frenchmen in the New Hebrides were the first in the Pacific to declare for de Gaulle, on July 20, 1940.

Officer Of The Order Of

British Empire

IT was officially announced in Fiji in August by the Western Pacific. High Commission that Mons. Henri Sautot, described as “Resident Commissioner for France in the New Hebrides’’, had been ap pointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Apparently, this honour was con ferred by the King after M. Sautot had declared himself for Free France and the British Alliance, but before he was ap pointed by General de Gaulle to be Gov ernor of New Caledonia. The gazette in which the honour is notified is dated August 30, and M. Sautot did not arrive in Noumea until September 19.

Mr. Ivan Champion, one of the best known younger members of the Papuan Public Service, recently obtained leave of absence and proceeded to Sydney, to enlist in the A IP. He was accented for military service but, subsequently, was rejected on the eyesight test. He wears spectacles permanently—as do many members of the A.I.F. It seems extra ordinary that this young man, who was able, spectacles and all, to explore suc cessfully and chart large parts of un known New Guinea, and who would have made an admirable junior officer, should have been rejected as unfit for the Army. Sometimes, the ways of the military machine pass all human under standing.