Mrs. Jane I. Wallace

Returns to the Charge Through Trustee Council

IT will be remembered that, in the palmy days between the wars, Mrs, Jane T.

Wallace made miserable the lives of sundry high officials in New Guinea, by her persistent charges that natives were being cruelly ill-treated and exploited.

Again and again, her charges were in vestigated and blown cut —both by Aus tralian officials and by the League of Nations —but Mrs. Wallace —a highly educated, cultured woman, and a tireless campaigner—refused to stay put, and re turned regularly to the attack. Official files groaned under the weight of her manuscripts, written in perfect copper plate.

Mrs. Wallace and, her son operated a small plantation near Rabaul. They were in constant, close touch with the natives: und their influence was not favourably regarded by officialdom.

Mrs. Wallace was evacuated in 1941, and was not heard of for several years. Her son, Mr. Tom V. Wallace, also a well educated man, remained in the Rabaul district and was captured by the invading Japs, and was among the hundreds who lost their lives on the “Montevideo Maru” —sacrificed by blundering Australian officials.

Mrs. Wallace, 81, and as active and warrior-like as ever, now lives in Spring Street, Melbourne, and she has turned her batteries upon the Trusteeship Council of UNO. Her sensational charges of “vir tual slave labour’’ have been seized upon with delight by that section of Council members who are classified as “Com munists, fellow-travellers and Anglo phobes generally,” and the sensational Press on May 25 carried large slabs of her fiercely-written communications. The fact that her charges are not treated seriously by anyone who knows New Guinea, past or present, makes no difference to the Anglophobes.

Much as one deplores her campaign, one must admire the ability, tenacity and strength of character of little old Mrs.

Wallace. She could have achieved so much, had she put her hand to a different kind of plough.—RWß.