New System in N. Caledonian

Government

IT was announced semi-officially in Noumea during October that the three governing bodies—the General Council, the Colonial Commission, and the Privy Council—are to be dissolved; and that a committee of 18, represen tative of mining, agricultural, pastoral, business, and shipping interests, and the local de Gaulle party, will be elected to assist the Governor, M. Sautot, in the administration of the Colony.

Mr. A. S. Kerlin has been appointed lighthouse service mechanic at Thursday Island, replacing Mr. Frank Baker, who was transferred to Melbourne.

Mr. William McCredie, who was for 20 years a resident of Suva, most of his time as a member of the staff of the “Fiji Times” and latterly in the Government Service, has now settled down in Sydney, in retirement. When he was a small boy of 10, in Scotland, someone gave him a bible—and he wrote on the fly-leaf: “When I am a man I am going to be a missionary in Fiji”. Long years after wards, when he was a middle-aged news paper man in Sydney, Mr. McCredie was invited to fill a newspaper position in Fiji; and so he and his family trans ferred to Suva. When they were packing, someone came across the long-forgotten bible, with its inscription in childish handwriting. But the missionary part of the prophecy was wide of the mark —“in fact, it missed badly”, say Mr. McCredie’s candid friends.