Natives In New

Caledonia

Noumea, Dec. 27.

THE number of native children receiving elementary instruction in October, 1941, was 3858 (compared with 4,262 in 1940), of whom 2,197 were boys and 1,661 girls. The table was made up as follows:

The native population of the islands is steadily growing. In 1927 it was 27,100; in 1941 it is 29,824.

Mrs. Eilene Hertz, one of the outstand ing people in New Guinea, and a woman very highly esteemed, died suddenly at an Australian port on December 27, when she was put ashore from a vessel on which she was travelling to Austra lia. She was originally Miss Eilene Beery, of Sydney, and in 1917 she mar ried Mr. Steve Whiteman, and lived with him in Rabaul, where her home was a centre of social life. When her husband died, she carried on his store and trad ing business for several years, and about 1925 she settled down on her plantation at Kokola, in the Namatanai district of New Guinea. She married Mr. O. Hertz in 1929, but divorced him later.

Miss M. Diana Bentley, who passed through Auckland, NZ, a short time ago, en route to Suva, to visit her brother, Mr. Harold Thurston Bentley, of the Fiji Civil Service. Miss Bentley was born at the Government Station, Ocean Island (Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony), and was educated in Sydney. She has many re lations in the Pacific, and she is one of the most beautiful girls of the present Pacific generation.

Her mother is Mrs. E. M. Leembruggen, who married, as her second husband, one of the senior officials of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony. Their home in Ocean Island was re ported bombed by Japanese in December. (Photo, by Amy Harper, Auckland.)

Schools, 1940, 1941. Pupils.

State 30 31 1,030 Catholic ... 37 30 2,123 Protestant .. 24 30 705