"Shut in a Cage"

rE granting of freedom to the Indonesian labourers here has caused some commotion,” says Mr.

Nicholas Hagen, of Noumea, in a letter to a Sydney friend, “but it will not last long. Conditions will settle down again in a few weeks. , , “The following remark made by a Javanese labourer seems to sum up the situation very neatly: ‘Before we were like fowls tied to a pole. We had a string round our foot—but we could run about to some extent. Now, they have cut the string. Our feet are free but we are shut up in a cage’.”