Suspicion In

Rabaul

Plan For Capital's Removal?

APPARENT anxiety on the part of the Commonwealth Government to re vive the plan to move New Guinea’s chief administrative establishment from Rabaul to a less volcanic area—pre sumably on the mainland—has been noted in Rabaul with suspicion.

“There are too many powerful interests close to the Government, whose pockets would be benefited if the capital were moved to the mainland” is how one resi dent expresses it, in a private letter to the editor. “Our suspicions were not al layed by the broadcast of a statement by Dr. Woolnough, which was much criticised here.

“The truth is that there is no more danger here now than there has been at any time since Vulcan exploded in 1937.

The Observatory keeps a very good watch on the volcanoes, and we are all satisfied that, if another eruption is coming, we shall have plenty of warning of it.

“The recent earthquake was simply an earthquake, with its centre a long way from here. It was a really first-class shake; but we have become well accus tomed to guiras, in the last 25 years.

“I do not for a moment suggest that Ministers and officials are planning any thing improper. They are naturally anxious about our situation. The trouble is that they are so ignorant of conditions here that the clever gentlemen who whisper in the lobbies can put it all over them, when they want something done in the tropical territories for their own advantage.”

The Yen. S. R. M. Gill, Archdeacon of the Mamba District, Papua, will return to Samarai this month after spending furlough in Australia. He had intended to visit England, but owing to war con ditions, cancelled the trip.

Rev. A. P. Jennings, principal of St.

Aidan’s Training College (conducted by the New Guinea Mission), Divari, Papua, arrived in Sydney in January on furlough.