Babbling Senators
p. 35 · Read in the full issue
Offence Given in N.
Caledonia
From Our Own Correspondent
Noumea, Nov. 30.
ILL-CONSIDERED remarks by US politicians regarding American post war Pacific plans have been badly received in New Caledonia as well as in other Pacific Territories.
Since, in the most sombre hours of the war, New Caledonians decided to con tinue to fight alongside the British, they have regarded the assurances of Mr.
Churchill, President Roosevelt, and the Commonwealth and New Zealand Gov ernments, guaranteeing their integrity as a French Colony, as binding.
With an outlook on South Pacific problems that is almost identical with that of Australians and New Zealanders, by whom they feel that their position is best understood, they are now planning to modernise and develop their country after the war, with the help of immigra tion from France. When France dropped suddenly out of the war, they honoured the collective defence decisions taken at the Wellington Conference and have applied the words spoken by Mr. Nash on that occasion to themselves. They are at all times willing to discuss with New Zealand, Australia, the United States, the Netherlands and Britain the question of the mutual use of bases to provide eco nomic transport and maintain security.
The emphasis, as the “Auckland Weekly” puts it, falls on the word “mutual,” and Caledonians would not like to see privileges granted to the United States that were not also shared by her closest neighbours. They would bitterly oppose any loss of French sove reignty or the handing over of any of their territory to be used as a naval base exclusively by one foreign country.
THEREFORE, the suggestion by one or two notorious American Senators that the United States should “take over” New Caledonia after the war is regarded here as unsporting, undemo cratic and unmindful of the real interests of the South Pacific. It is also a threat to Australian trade interests, since any exclusive privileges granted the United States would have the effect of dragging New Caledonia out of the Australian trade orbit in which it has hitherto revolved. Caledonians prefer Sydney, rather than San Francisco, to be their trading capital in the future as it has been in the past, both on account of proximity and because they know the Australians as a kindred people, geo graphically, economically and politically better fitted to understand and appreciate their own particular problems and needs than are the people of the United States, by whom, above all, they do not want to be “bossed.”