In New Caledonia

From Our Own Correspondent

Noumea, Oct. 31.

The sugar position in New Caledonia has been reversed. Martinique sugar is now being sold in Noumea for 13.10 francs, instead of 19,30 francs; while Australian sugar has risen from 12.40 to 17.50 francs per kilo. ♦ ♦ * Eight thousand Noumeans —in fact, well over half the town’s inhabitants—visited Noumea’s new Woolworth-style store, the Printania, on its opening days. It struck the locals as being very up-to-date—“just like Sydney.” • * ♦ Receptions have been held in New Cale donia in honour of the visiting Rev.

Mother Superior of the Order of St.

Joseph de Cluny. She is also visiting Tahiti, Fiji, New Zealand and Haiti. * * * New Caledonia recently learned—with surprise, comments the Bulletin de Com merce—that no fewer than 155 of the Colony’s inhabitants were sentenced by a Vichy court-martial in Saigon, Indo china, in February, 1942, to death or hard labour, for periods of 20 years. The list of those numbering 142 condemned to death and loss of their possessions is headed by Governor Henri Sautot, who rallied New Caledonia and the New Hebrides, so far as its French settlers were concerned, to Free France. He was condemned “for having handed over the two Territories to a foreign Power” (mean ing Britain)! This year, in annulling the sentences, the Court of Appeal praised the actions of the condemned persons as be ing “highly patriotic and with the effect of bringing about the liberation of France.” • ♦ ♦ Because of unforeseen recruitment diffi culties with the Indonesian Government the visits of the Messageries Maritimes vessels St. Loubert Bie, St. Mere Eglise and St. Nazaire to Batavia have been cancelled.

They were to have picked up inden tured Javanese labourers for New Cale donia and New Hebrides.