The Fortune Of

War

American "Invasion" Helps Young Caledonians

By Captain Homer A. Dye,

Us Army

HERE in New Caledonia are two brothers, Philippe and Stephane de St. Quentin who, from an idea that originated on a summer horseback vaca tion-trip across the island, built a busi ness that has been supplying oxygen to the US forces in this area.

Their trip was to the century-old, but sparsely-inhabited, settlement at Touho, and on to the Cascade de Ba, which tumbles down a mountain crag into the sea.

When the brothers went back to their studies in Noumea that summer, they spent long hours tinkering with the hand propelled electric generator, the Leyden jar, and the paraphernalia imported from France a half-century ago, with which the Frere, instructeur de physique, demon strated his lectures to his classes. They took a. post-graduate course in such ele mentary engineering courses as the island afforded, and subscribed to technical journals from France and America.

A few years ago, starting with the materials they found on the spot at Cas cade de Ba, the two brothers began build ing an electrical plant. Improvising from old machinery procured from abandoned mines, and importing the essential parts, they built a generator and compressors.

Largely by their own labour, and with occasional assistance from the Kanakas from neighbouring tribes, they dragged heavy iron pipes up the mountain to make a flume.

It was a gala day when the natives from the coffee plantations, the colonists of the east coast, and the padres of the mission assembled to see the first cours ing of the hydraulic power through the turbines, and the first ray of electric light in the old settlement.

Then they began the manufacture of oxygen and hydrogen for the acetylene used in the mining mills of the island.

Every franc they could save from their sales, they invested again in machinery and added factory space. To get their product over the mountain trails across the island, or to the port on the coast and the little monthly steamer, was a major transportation problem, and a grievous absorption of their hard-won profits.

THEN came the war, and the Americans . occupied the island as a base. The big Army trucks literally beat a pathway to their door. The two young engineers found an American loan thrust into their hands, and they were exhorted to build bigger and to produce more. The Army needed oxygen, and huge truck loads of the big steel cylinders rumbled over the mountains and down to the air base on the plain of Tontouta.

The brothers de St. Quentin, revelling in the gift of war prosperity, have visions of bigger things to be done. But when the Army goes, what then? Other oxygen producers on the island, including plants which the Army itself has installed, will find that the oxygen business has liter ally vanished into thin air.

But there is the new motor highway

along the east coast that has opened up the natural wealth and beauty of the dis trict that has hitherto been isolated for lack of adequate communication.

The brothers hope that there will be a great amount of traffic on the road — prospectors and financiers to develop the newly-opened resources, and tourists to view the beauties —and that there will be a need for hotels and tourist camps. They plan to erect a big straw-thatched lodge and de luxe native huts of bamboo and woven palm leaves. Wired with elec tricity, and with neat little enamelled electric stoves, tourists’ wives will endure the hardships of a fishing trip with a proper flair of Ritziness. For there will be electricity to burn, after the American Army leaves.