Loyalty To France
p. 17 · Read in the full issue
N. Caledonian Native Refutes
Incorrect Australian Report
The following is a statement made on Noumea Radio by Maou Djoel, New Caledonian native chief, after he re turned from Suva, where he was a delegate at the South Pacific Con ference early in May.
DURING the whole session, the Con ference kept rigidly within the limits which had been defined. Therefore, I was surprised, on my arrival at Noumea, to learn of the interpretation given by a certain Press to our debates.
Thus the Station Radio Melbourne de clared, in its broadcast last Tuesday, that certain delegates had advocated that par ticular territories, including New Cale donia, should be joined to Australia and New Zealand.
It is evident that we would have vehemently protested against such pro posals, if they had ever been made in our presence, either at public sessions or in private.
For a hundred years we have been a French province and have proved, when it was necessary, our faithfulness to the Mother Country. It is not at a time when Prance is extending our rights and placing us on the same level as all her oiher children that we would dream of claiming allegiance to another nation.
As a delegate of the native populations of New Caledonia, I deplore the broad casting of such information, which has no serious basis, but risks compromising in the future the happy results which we could rightly expect from the Suva meet ing. .
Miss Vivian Barnes (Wynnum) and Mr. lan Holloway, were married recently in Brisbane. Their future home will be Port Moresby.
NG Women’s Club of Sydney
THE annual general meeting of the New Guinea Women’s Club of Sydney will be held at 11 a.m. on July 20, in the Feminist Club, 77 King St., Sydney.
Miss Elizabeth Exon, of Suva, Fiji, has been spending a brief holiday in Sydney, prior to going on to Melbourne, where she will join the staff of a large general hospital to undergo training as a nursing sister.
Mr. and Mrs. Max Roth, of Port Moresby, have been spending their leave in Brisbane but returned to the Territory in the May Bulolo. They were accom panied by their son-in-law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Blackman, of Ala bama, USA, and grand-daughter Dorothy.
Mr, B. F. Gunnarsson-Hayman, who has spent some years in Papua-New Guinea, mostly in the BP services, is spending a holiday in Australia, prior to going on to Fiji and Samoa.