Dutch or Asiatics in Western New Guinea?

T is bad enough—from the South Pacific . viewpoint—that the archipelagoes of the East Indies should be surrendered ito the control of the European-hating, bmmunist-ridden Indonesians. It is yen worse that there should be, under 3rious consideration, a plan that Dutch ew Guinea should become part of the ew “Republic.”

New Guinea is the world’s second irgest island—an enormous Territory, of nknown potentialities. It is three or four mes the size of New Zealand. It has lany minerals, including vast oil de osits—an oilfield already has been deve iped at the western end, and, sooner or iter, oil will be found elsewhere. Be mse its climate ranges from the steamy :juatorial coastline to the high, cool, ch plateaus of the interior, it can pro uce a wide variety of foodstuffs, and ipport European, as well as tropical )mmunities.

The eastern half of New Guinea is Oder British-Australian control. That mtrol may be justified on colonial 'ounds —the industries of Papua and orth-east New Guinea have been deve ped by Australian enterprise—but it is indered imperative by the fact, demon rated in the late war, that this huge land is Australia’s only land barrier ?ainst the growing threat of Asiatic egression.

European control of New Guinea is our lief safeguard in the South Pacific—it rotects Australia directly, and all the outh Pacific Islands, from New Guinea istward to Tahiti and southward to New ealand, indirectly. The surrender of ny part of that control to the hybrid it-up that is described elsewhere in this sue as “the Republic of the United bates of Indonesia,” would be an act of ipreme folly.

INHERE is no justification, on poli l tical, geographical or ethnological grounds, for the transfer of Dutch r ew Guinea to the Indonesians. The

Indonesians, preponderantly Asiatic, never penetrated New Guinea. There is considerable Malay blood in some coastal settlements; but, generally, and over whelmingly, the two million or so people in New Guinea are of the Papuan race, and much more closely allied with the races of the Western Pacific than with the Indonesians, They have no connec tion, racial or cultural, with Indonesia.

Furthermore, the New Guinea natives are primitive people. The Europeans in New Guinea have made the protection and advancement of this race the first principle of their administrative policy.

What sort of chance would these simple folk have with an Indonesian adminis tration? Of a certainty, they would be enslaved.

AS Australia is primarily concerned, it might have been expected that the voice of Australia would be raised, loudly and insistently, as soon as this Dutch New Guinea issue emerged from the Dutch-Indonesian “agreement” at The Hague on November 2. Up to date, Australia has not said one word, publicly.

So far as the bemused Socialists of Can berra are concerned, Dutch New Guinea might be Timbuctoo or Lapland.

Canberra is at least consistent. It has been part of the “foreign policy” of the egregious Dr. Evatt to allow the Dutch- Indonesian situation to develop to the point where the Indonesians could achieve what they called “national independ ence.”

The “Indonesian Republic” was brought into being in wartime by the Japanese, as part of their plan to create, in South east Asia, a group of satellite States, such as Moscow has created in Eastern Europe. It was a poor, contemptible set up, such as was to be expected by the circumstances of its birth; and, under normal conditions, it would not have lived five minutes after the surrender of Japan. That it did live was due to the

fact that the war-exhausted Dutch were deserted in 1945-46 by Britain and America; and the “Republic,” using Japanese arms and advice, and being given the moral support of the Com munists, was able to fasten its vicious fangs in the Dutch throat and hang on, for quite a time.

By 1947 the Dutch had recovered suf ficiently to deal with the Indonesians; and they would by now have set up in the East Indies an efficient administration, with all due and proper provision for Indonesian nationalist aspirations, had the United Nations not interfered. In this regard, America allowed coteries of well meaning, academic and utterly imprac tical Planners to influence her UNO policy. The British Socialists, who already had given away most of Britain’s Asiatic Empire, naturally made common cause with the Planners. Russia, of course, was intensely pro-Indonesian.

France, having been already over-ridden by Planners in relation to Indo-China, would do little in relation to a similar situation in Indonesia.

And so the Dutch, who at the end of 1948 looked like re-establishing sound and good government in the'old Nether lands Indies, were literally thrown by the United Nations savants to the Indo nesian-Communist wolves. Their Nether lands Indies, a model in colonial develop ment and administration, is gone.

The South Pacific’s barrier against Asia, which should have commenced in the narrow straits between Asia and the archipelagoes, has now been shifted far southwards, to the borders of New Guinea. And, if the Planners have their way, and Dutch New Guinea is given to Indonesia, by 1952 the barrier will be the Timor Sea and Torres Strait.

AND in this critical period between the Japanese surrender to the Allies in 1945, and the Dutch surrender to the Indonesians in 1949, what has Aus tralia been doing?

In 1946, the Federation of Australian wharf labourers’ unions, notoriously and

aggressively Communist, declared war on the Dutch in Indonesia, and refused to work any Dutch ships which were in any way in contact with the East Indies; and that ban is still on.

The Australian Socialist Government, whose dithering weakness in all inter national relationships is a by-word, did nothing at all to repudiate the action taken by the wharf labourers. As it allowed the ban on Dutch ships to con tinue, it can be said that it endorsed the Indonesian war upon the Dutch.

During 1948, the most critical year in the Dutch-Indonesian relationship, when the Dutch were defeated by UNO inter ference, the head of the United Nations organisation was the Australian Minister, Dr. Evatt, who is actually and directly responsible for Australia’s “foreign policy.” Mr, Chifley takes no part in “external affairs,” and probably knows nothing about them.

DUTCH New Guinea remains Dutch for one year. At the end of that time, it is to become either Dutch or Indonesian. If it is to be Indonesian, it will be subject to Asiatic, Communist and anti-European control.

Nominally, the new “Republic of the United States of Indonesia” is part- Dutch, part-Indonesian. All who have followed the history of recent events know that Dutch influence in the East Indies, henceforth, will be a steadily diminishing quantity.

All the strength the South Pacific countries can summon should be used in the direction of making Dutch control permanent over Western New Guinea and, perhaps, over Timor. (If the Portuguese are to be allowed to hold one half of Timor, surely the Dutch may be permitted to retain the other half.) In the long view—which envisages what is happening to-day in China, Indo china, Burma and India—the surrender of Dutch New Guinea to Indonesia would be a calamity of first magnitude to the South Pacific. Australia should be tak ing a leading part in this matter.

Actually, Australia has not said one word. And no word against Indonesia will be said while the Socialists hold power in Canberra.

The issue, of course, will be decided on December 10. If the Chifley Government is thrown out in the general election on that date, a very different Australian voice will be heard; and Australian policy in relation to Indonesia certainly will not be directed by the Communist leaders of the wharf labourers’ union.