Pacific Trade

Shape of Future Pacific Trade A Subtle Japanese Plan

WHAT is to be the political shape of the post-war Pacific? Will Pacific territories be dominated by the United States? Will Britain and Holland return to the Far East, or must we be come reconciled to a new Japanese

Empire comprising Philippines, Borneo,

Indo-China, Malaya, Thailand and Dutch East Indies?

On the answers to those questions de pend our future life in the South Pacific.

There is significance, therefore, in this article published in a Sydney newspaper on March 30: — The need for the United States to immediately prepare a plan for Australian economy after the war is emphasised by Mr. Felix Morley, editor of the “Washington Post”, in a two column article featured by the “Wall Street Journal”.

Mr Morley predicts that the British position in the Far East had been permanently weak ened as the result of the rising tide of Asiatic nationalism, and Australia will, possibly ex perience great changes.

These, he says, may involve profound modi fications of her tie with Britain, and an equally striking development of her contacts with the United States. .

He argues that as Australian production, both agricultural and industrial, is already strongly competitive with that of America, the rapid development of Australian industry under the stimulus of the war will mean that Australia will buy less from America, while the United States’ success in expanding imports from Canada and Latin America will make it diffi cult for her to absorb any large proportion of Australia’s agricultural surplus.

The Japanese plan is to furnish the Common wealth with oil and rubber while opening to Australian exports the huge markets that Tokio aims to control.

Here is a typical bit of the Seventh

Column activity which we may expect to see in an increasing measure in the United States —and which apparently can find publicity through newspapers which are too blind or stupid to recog nise it.

The meaning of the last paragraph of the quotation is very plain. Japan says to Australia; “Why worry about our taking over those territories from Britain and Holland? You will gain, rather than lose. You will not get any market at all for your products in USA; but, if you acquiesce in our control over Indonesia, we shall provide you with an unlimited market for your wool, dairy products, fruit and meat, in exchange for our wool and rubber.

It is clever, insidious propaganda. But surely it can be seen that if Japan gets away with her present territorial gains, Australia can say good-bye forever to her Pacific and Far East market for every kind of manufactured product.

Australia would not be allowed to manufacture, except for her own re quirements; she would be driven out of the Pacific Territories; she would be compelled to become a country only of primary production; and her chief mar kets for her primary products would be controlled largely by the unscrupulous and undependable Japanese.

Sir Arthur Richards, who was Governor of Fiji and High Commissioner for the Western Pacific from 1936 to 1938, was recently created a GCMG (Knight Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George). He now is Governor of Jamaica, British West Indies.

Miss Rachel Mune, Supervisor of the Suva Telephone Exchange, is now on long leave prior to retirement from the Fiji Civil Service. She has been in the Ser vice for over 25 years.