Facilities

Communications And Settlement

What War Conditions May Do for the Territories

WAR correspondent Allan Dawes has been permitted to give, in an article t i P\J bllsl: \ ed ln Melbourne Herald” on a description of anew highway which the Allies have built through the hitherto trackless jungle on the northeast coast of Papua: Over what less than a year ago was a trackless, impenetrable range, whose giant hardwoods have fallen to make bridges and wayside revetments, we rode on a perfect highway which American engineers and machinery, with native labour as well as their own, have torn fr ?, l T l the grasp of Nature.

Australians and Papuan natives, as well as Americans, hailed us cheerfully as we climbed and dropped and performed all the circus tricks an educated Jeep can perform. We passed the inevitable road signs characteristic of the American road engmeer—“Narrow bridge,” “dangerous Cl r7 e 4J;i t s' u n. + . ..

It would be difficult to exaggerate the importance of what is being done by the occupying armies to provide communica-

tion facilities in all the Pacific territories, In Papua, New Guinea, Solomons, New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Fiji and else where, the story is the same—Army, Navy and Air Force, using the considerable authority and resources they possess, are building roads and bridges, airfields, and ports, water-supply and electric-supplv systems, radio stations—even little towns —all mostly in places where, until now there was only primitive iunele or Kunai hillside, or empty coast-line ’

When the war is over, these things will not be removed. They will remain orac tically as a gift to the Territories, pro viding facilities for what mav be an era of the most rapid settlement and development ever known in the Pacific, War, in every way, is a curse But war may have its compensations ' War for example, may give to the backward’ter ritories of Papua and New Guinea an advance in communication and settle ment facilities which otherwise would not have come, under the Canberra Dead Hand Regime for 50 years