"Trusteeship"

Australia Gets Off on the Wrong Foot at UNCIO

rERE has been much very confusing talk at UNCIO (United Nations Con ference on International Organisa tion) about a “trusteeship” system which may follow the liquidation of the Man dates system (under which certain nations, under League of Nations super vision, administer some ten Territories).

The Territories originally were; A Class Mandates—Mesopotamia, Palestine, Syria. B Class —Togoland, Cameroons, German East Africa. C Class —New Guinea and Bismarck Archipelago (Australia): Western Samoa (New 'Zealand); Caroline, Marshall and Mariana Islands (Japan); and Nauru (Britain, Austra lia and NZ). Here in the Pacific, we are inter ested only in the C Class Mandates.

There is little doubt that, in the final wash-up, those C Class Territories will remain with their present “protectors,” except that the Japanese-held islands will pass into the charge of the United States.

However, Australian delegate Dr. Evatt has caused disturbance by demanding a system of trusteeship, not only for ter ritories left unprotected by the post-war readjustments, but also for all colonies generally, wherein sovereign nations rule over subject peoples. His argument is that such colonies and territories are being held in trust for their native peoples; and that the nations which hold them should be obliged to report regu larly, to some international authority, concerning the discharge of their obliga tions to the natives.

The Australian apparently has been encouraged in this revolutionary plan by Russia; but America is not well disposed towards it and naturally Britain and France, who hold scores of colonies of all kinds, would not agree to any such per fectionist idea.

Dr. Evatt says his proposal follows nat urally from the Anzac Agreement, signed by Australia and New Zealand in 1944.

But there is little there to support such a claim. ' The Agreement rightly lays stress upon the need for some authority to co-ordinate machinery and principles of administration, over a number of Ter ritories held by a number of nations — such as the South Pacific Region or the West Indies Region—but there is nothing in it to justify Australia (whose record of native administration in Papua and New Guinea is not by any means credit able) in interfering with Great Britain’s system of ruling her colonies. Such a system, applied to Britain, would cause confusion and administrative inefficiency.

If the Australian representatives _at UNCIO have any especially effective methods of administration to impart, they could not do better than return promptly and apply them in Australia, whose internal condition, as the result of mis-government, is literally appalling, and getting worse.