We Are Free!

Emphatic Declaration by French South Pacific Colonies

Prom Our Own Correspondent

Noumea, June 4.

ONE of three Government communi ques issued this morning states that Governor Sautot will speak from Radio-Noiimea on June 18.

“He proposes,” states the proclamation, “to take the opportunity of replying to the injurious insinuations of Monsieur I’Admiral Darlan affirming that the colonies of New Caledonia and French Oceania have been seized by the British.

For once and all, he will solemnly affirm that these two colonies have the will and the honour to remain more French than ever, enjoying their entire inde pendence under the sovereignty of Free France.”

French And Usa

THE first public act of the newly arrived American Consul (Mr. Mc- Vitty) was to lay a wreath of flow ers, forming a stars-and-stripes effect, on the Noumea war memorial.

Governor Sautot himself led the cries of “Vive Amerique” which followed, and the New Caledonian people present seized the opportunity to express their friendship for the American nation, to whom they look as their protector and economic ally.

The French residents of Noumea, who boycotted a similar ceremony staged by the Japanese Consul some time ago, were present in force. School children were let out a quarter of an hour in advance of school hours, so that they could be present.

Military Commandant

AN arrival by the mailboat (which brought the first letters from the New Caledonian contingent, now training in Australia) was Chef-de-Bat aillon Jardin, successor to Commandant Broche, as Commandant Superieur of French Pacific troops. His wife and three children arrived by another ship, a few days earlier. Commandant Jardin, born in Brest in 1894, was wounded and a prisoner in the last war, since when he has served in French West Africa, Madagascar and the Cameroons. He is a Croix de Guerre and chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He is an ardent de Gaulliste.

Tnd-Japan”

INDO-CHINA is to-day sarcastically known in this colony as “Ind- Japan”. A press communique refers to the new accord signed in Tokyo by the Vichy ambassador with the Japanese Government which is described as “yet another step by the men of Vichy on the monotonous route of abandonments and capitulations, this time sanctioning the Japanese seizure of Indo-China. . . . The convention opens the doors to Japanese commercial men, workmen colonists who desire to settle, turning our fine colony into another Manchuria. Like metropo litan Prance, Indo-China can only be saved by an English victory.

“But what a lesson for New Caledo nians who refused, and who sometimes even still refuse, to understand! Were not New Caledonia resolutely pledged to follow the way of honour, she too would now be finding herself delivered by the collaborators of the enemy to the Japan ese hunger, just as is happening now to our belle Indo-Chine.”