Is There to be a “New Order” in

the Pacific?

IN the hearts of most Territorians (for so we designate nowadays those Europeans who have made their permanent homes in all the Pacific Islands between New Guinea and Tahiti) there is a strong, per sistent but, alas! diminishing hope that they may see, after the war, in the Islands, a restoration of the con ditions which ruled before Satan turned Schickelgruber and To jo loose upon the world.

It is a vain hope. Not only is War tearing to pieces the social structure of all native communities; War actually is altering the face of the Islands themselves, so that, when the armed forces have passed on, there will be roads and airfields and ports and little towns where, only two years ago, there was primitive jungle and untouched lagoon. Tens of thousands of Americans, Australians and New Zealanders, who never pre viously had seen a coconut, now are making an intimate acquaintance with the Pacific Islands. ' Many of them, inevitably, will return.

The Islands of the nineteenth cen tury romanticists, already changing in the past two or three decades, now are gone, forever—blasted into the past by the foul hordes of Japan, and by the mighty machine which we have had to create to save ourselves from extermination.

We lament the passing of an era which held much of beauty and charm. But laments achieve noth ing. The crime is not of our doing.

There is a job before us. Our Islands

world has been shattered to bits; we may not re-mould it nearer to our heart’s desire, perhaps, but re-mould it we must. There is planning to be done.

MANY planners are at work. They have not reached the confer ence table, yet; but typewriters are running hot and printing-presses beginning to groan. There is a torrent of urging and argument; before long, it will become a flood.

There is great feeling, but a rather pitiful lack of vision.

These commentators are honest and altruistic, but most of them re fuse to look at the future with more than one eye—the eye that has been trained to see only according to the measure of their personal experience and ambitions. The trader has one viewpoint; the administrative official another; the missionary yet another.

Each seems to think that the new Pacific world may be shaped some thing like the old Pacific world, that ended on December 7, 1941; and each hopes that the new shaping may be kinder to native rights, or commercial enterprise, or Governmental authority, or whatever it is he is interested in.

Already, they are arguing with each other—futile, useless argument. Why are they so blind to the plain, inescapeable fact that the old set-up in the Pacific Territories is being as ruthlessly torn apart by War, making a new and different shaping inevit able, as are the steppes of western Russia or the devastated cities of Germany?

INVASION and hard fighting in the Melanesian Territories, and the presence of large bodies of European soldiers, new to Islands life, in most of the Micronesian and Polynesian Territories, already have had a pro found, disturbing effect upon the native peoples. In two ways, at least, their living conditions have been altered permanently—they have been brought into such close contact with masses of white men that the old. unwritten but very clearly defined distinctions, as between white and brown status, have been largely wiped out; and there is so much easily-won soldiers’ money in circulation now, in every Territory, that it is inconceiv able that the natives will accept in the future the wages standards of the past.

Each of these facts creates a special set of problems for the future —one especially for the missionaries, and one for the employers of native labour.

But those things are concerned only with the future of the natives. The native problem, probably, is the first problem of the Islands—but it is by no means the only problem.

HOW are the Pacific Teritories, in future, to be controlled and administered? Are we to return to the pitiful, inadequate system under which each was tied separately to the tails of the bureaucracies of Canberra and Wellington, London and Paris and Washington, administered in separate, watertight, non-communi cating compartments, so' that Fiji knows nothing officially of what is happening in Samoa, and New Guinea and Solomons disdainfully ignore administrative activities on the other

side of the imaginary line which' con stitutes the border between them? Or are we to have some sort of a union, or federation, so that the adminis trative problems common to the dozen Territories south of the equator (and most problems are common to all) may be jointly studied, and a common policy,, based on experience, evolved?

The bureaucrats of Canberra and London, Paris and Wellington, will almost certainly run, yelping, to the

defence of their privileges and per quisites; they will want the old system continued. We can expect nothing constructive from them. But what will America say?

Is it not becoming as clear as day light that the United States, having been precipitated into this war by uncontrolled developments in the Pacific, is not going to retire from the Pacific until satisfied that all future war-making factors there are either removed or properly controlled? The Americans do not interfere with pro perly established Governments and national freedoms—that is the most prominent thing in the foreign re lations history of the United States — but the Americans have left us in no doubt that, having come into the Pacific to clean up a ghastly mess, they are not going to leave the Pacific until all danger of another Pacific upheaval is gone.

IT will be surprising, indeed, if the retention of some form of American control in the Pacific is not accompanied by a rearrangement and redistribution of Pacific trade. Few of us—even the merchants whose interests may suffer—will quarrel with the new set-up.

As the months pass, and we get the events of that terrifying year of 1942 into focus, we realise more clearly the debt we owe to the United States. It was only that amazingly quick con centration of American power in the South Pacific in 1942 which saved us (the Pacific Territories certainly, and

probably Australia and New Zealand as well) from invasion, enslavement and, maybe, extermination.

The Americans may not approve of the unscientific, haphazard adminis trative methods under which so many of the Pacific Territories were ruled.

They certainly will ask why, if self government can be allowed to the Tongans and the Filipinos, it should be withheld from certain Polynesian peoples, like the Samoans. Also, while acknowledging that the natives of New Guinea, Solomons and New Hebrides are still too primitive for self-government, the Americans may ask what has been done in the past to lift these Melanesians from the Stone Age into the Machine Age.

Most of those who are planning a new Islands set-up have little first hand knowledge of Islands conditions.

They urgently demand that the Terri tories be reserved for the use of the natives; that “exploitation” should cease; and that far-reaching schemes of native education and health should •be put into operation—although how funds are going to be provided for schools and hospitals, if there is to be an extinguisher put on commercial enterprise, no one attempts to ex plain.

It seems to this writer that the academic folk are doing most of the planning, and the babbling; while the people with a practical knowledge of the Territories, who really can contri bute something helpful are inarti culate and ignored.

LET there be planning, and early planning; but, if much confusion and exasperation and useless argu ment are to be avoided, let all the planners, before they begin to mould their new Pacific world, get a clear answer to the following questions:— Are the Territories to he adminis tered in the future, as in the past, merely as appendages of various Euro pean and Dominions Governments, without any official communication or exchange betioeen Territories?

Will America insist that all such Governments shall formulate a definite native policy . in accord with some general principle covering the care, protection and education of natives?

If —as is anticipated—the policy of encouraging natives to become peasant landholders is generally accepted, how is it proposed to provide labour for industries in the Territories? By indenturing native labour from primi tive villages, as a first step toward training the peasant-farmer (as was done in New Guinea and the Solo mons) ? Or by bringing in Asiatic labour for a fixed term (as in Neio Caledonia and New Hebrides) ? Or by introducing a permanent community of Asiatic leaseholders (as in the case of the Indians in Fiji) ?

Is it possible or practicable to plan soldier-settlements in the Territories (which will certainly be demanded by both service-men and Governments) unless proper provision is made for (a) land, (b) adequate finance, (c) agricultural tuition, (d) labour, (e) tuition in the handling of natives, (f) guaranteed markets for plantation

products, (g ) transport and com munication.

Until the principles and policies involved in those questions are clari fied, it is waste of time to talk much at this stage, about the future of the Pacific Territories.