Australia And The New Hebrides

Land Grants Which Are Now Forgotten

'J'HIS article, sent by a special

correspondent -from Noumea on

May 3, reminds us that the -future of the Condominium of the New

Hebrides, like that of the Mandates,

may\ come up for consideration by the new world authority being created at San Francisco.

Australia is believed to covet the

New Hebrides, for protective reasons.

But, apart from the operations of Burns Philp & Co., Ltd., Australia has done nothing whatever to develop the Territory—nearly all credit for the colonisation there must gq to the French.

A LITTLE remembered crisis in New Hebridean affairs occurred after the last World War, resulting from the French Government’s refusal to buy out the Higginson interests in the French New Hebridean Company. Higginson was the Englishman to whom the French gave grand nationalisation papers when he organised the New Caledonian nickel company, and made France for a time dominant in the New Hebrides. He left his interest to members of his large French family, but after the Condominium Government was formed the affairs of the SFNH (Societe Francaise des Nouvelles Hebrides) got in rather a bad way. • In the Australian House of Represen tatives in 1921, the Prime Minister, Mr W. M. Hughes, made the sensational announcement that the company had offered to sell all its interests to Aus tralia. The offer, he said, included all the French land in the Group, which he estimated at 600,000 hectares, or half the total area. Mr, Hughes explained that this offer had been made to him during the Imperial Conference in London, and that the French Government had given an assurance that it would raise no ob jection to the transaction. He added

that the operation would give Australia supremacy in the Group, and that the Japanese might put pressure on the sellers if Australia refused to buy.

TWENTY-FIVE million francs was asked for the land, to be paid over a period of five years. But it turned out later that the French Government had been offered the same interest for fifteen millions, and that the French option holder hoped for a commission of some thing like ten million on the deal.

Not getting an immediate reply, the company next cabled Australia that it had resumed its freedom of action, and that American interests were trying to negotiate. This may have been part bluff, for the publicity given in France to the offer made to Australia induced the French Government to step in at last in earnest and obtain control through the Bank of Indo-China.

Ballandes, of Bordeaux, the big Cale donian and Hebridean trading concern (“The French Burns Philp”), next came in, and are supreme in the French com pany to-day.

The French Government readily agreed to their suggestion that Indo-Chinese coolie labourers should be introduced to cultivate Hebridean land “much as the Hindus are being introduced into Fiji.”

Actually, the development of Hindu and Indo-Chinese labour in the two archi pelagos has not been on identical lines.

GREAT interest attaches to the state ment of Mr. Hughes that he per sonally was not in favour of an Australian purchase at the price asked, because he did not feel that the titles of possession were in all cases perfectly sound. Above all, it was a question of price and of the validity of land titles.

He thought that, on examination, a num ber of the French claims might be con tested by the natives. If the titles of the French company to 376,000 hectares were incontestable, they seemed much less sure for the remaining 220,000. The real cause of trouble in the New Hebrides was over regulations concerning labour.

After the option had been dropped, the Minister for the Colonies in Paris said that he had had no official information of the offer having been made by the French company to the Australian Gov ernment. In any case, he would have considered such an offer with disapproval.

MR. HUGHES said later that French reports that discussions had taken place at the Imperial Conference favouring British annexation of the New Hebrides were incorrect. The question had not come before the Conference. He had certainly discussed the New Hebrides with the Secretary of State for the Colonies, but this discussion had no re lation with any offer to purchase land, but was simply to put Mr. Churchill au courant with the complaints brought for ward by Australian interests on the subject of the Condominium. (At that time, Australian missionary bodies in particular, were urging the Government to persist in its efforts to come to a friendly arrangement with the French so that the Group could pass under British control. They urged that Parliament should be given an oppor tunity to discuss the French company’s offer to sell its land and rights.) Winston Churchill, whom Mr. Hughes met in London in 1921, had already a remarkable knowledge of New Hebridean affairs. About the time the Condominium agreement came into force

he had been Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, and an Australian settler wrote (I quote from a paragraph in the French “Mois Hebrides” of 1908): “There are very few things concerning the New Hebrides that Winston Churchill does not know. I have been correspbnding with him for two months, and am astonished at his knowledge and grasp of the affairs that pre-occupy us. Mr. Dale, of the Colonial Office, also knows the Hebrides, and Lord Elgin shows interest.”

EDITORIAL NOTE: Although agitation from various bodies in the past has not given Australia any sovereign rights in the New Hebrides, the Commonwealth, nonetheless, is one of the largest land owners in the Condominium, and for over 30 years the Commonwealth Government maintained a solicitor in Vila to watch Commonwealth interests m the slow deliberations of the Joint Court in re lation to land titles.

About 60 years ago, several Australian business men, led by Sir James Burns, founder of Burns Philp & Co., Ltd., formed the Australasian and New Hebrides Co., Ltd., which commenced trading and planting in Jhe New Hebrides.

The new company did not flourish finan cially, although it pursued a vigorous policy of land-buying, and by the time it was wound-up and taken over by Burns Philp &' Co., it owned plantation lands on most of the islands of the Group. This land was acquired originally from the natives, as was all land bought by the early settlers. Present-day land-owner ship is based on such native deeds, but validity of title rests with the decision of the Joint Court.

Eventually, all interests taken over from the Australasian and New Hebrides Co. by Burns Philp, were handed over as a gift by Sir James Burns to the Australian Government. Possibly, Sir James felt that if Australia had land interests there

she would more readily take an interest in the Group, and that if .Australian settlers were encouraged to go to the New Hebrides, the large trading concern of BP’s would ultimately benefit. What ever the reason, the Commonwealth accepted the land interests, and, between 1905-12, Australian settlers went to the New Hebrides. Australia, however, later lost interest in the settlers, and to some extent in the land. The settlers either got out or acquired French nationality in order that they might participate in the more helpful policy of France towards her pioneer colonists and, more particu larly, that they might be able to employ Asiatic labour—without which planting operations in the New Hebrides are virtually impossible.