49 Nations To Deal With Japan—
pp. 7-9 · Read in the full issue
And Our Security
HE United States has asked 49 nations to send representatives to a conference in San mcisco in September, to complete ['reaty of Peace with. Japan. Al dy, it has the earmarks of a aing dogfight. n a dogfight, no one takes sides; s just bores in and bites who ror whatever is nearest. In the ice Treaty Conference, each of parties is going to be concerned stly with its own selfish interests, I careless of the over-all picture, ’he Philippines, for instance, says won’t play unless it gets war nage compensation from Japan— spective of the fact that if lippines gets it, so also must io-China, Burma, East Indies, lay a, Borneo, New Guinea, )ua, Solomons and Gilbert and ce.
Britain wants some limitation on anese exports, which otherwise damage Britain’s trade with the Jific countries. Australia fears t Japanese rearmament will m the renewal of the Japanese eat to her security. And so on. ■ussia and her satellites, who are ang the 49 invited nations, will course try to sabotage the Con gee. They will resist a Peace aty made on American specifi ons. merica’s main concern is the re iblishment of a free and strong an, capable of defending her !dom against an aggressor, and ermined to resist the eastward
thrust of Muscovite Communism.
America wants her front line of defence to exist from Japan, through Philippines and New Guinea to Australia. As America now is the chief protector of the security and freedom of all the small nations of the Pacific, we are bound to ally ourselves completely with America, and ignore other interests.
Even before the Red influence spread across China, we here in the South Pacific knew that we had no future unless some Great Power gave us protection against the hundreds of millions of hungry and under-privileged people of Asia.
Then, we had the protection of Britain, France, and the United States. Now, while the Asiatic menace, under Muscovite direction, has increased tenfold, war and Socialism have deprived us of any real guarantee of help from Western Europe. As Britain’s in fluence wanes, the Asiatic nations of Southern Asia, and the “Wog” nations of the Middle East, tend more and more to range themselves against Western Europe; and, more and more, we find ourselves, here in the Pacific, facing a very hostile world, except for the friendly, English-speaking people of North America.
BRITAIN’S influence may be re stored. It is difficult to believe that a Power of such mangifi cent achievements and inspiring
traditions, with the qualities demon strated between 1939 and 1945, can be permanently reduced to feeble ness and insignificance by six years of rule by Socialists, Bloomsbury Planners and Fellow-Travellers.
It is very hard for people of British blood, in the Dominions, to watch the Attlees and Bevans des troying the Empire, and to see the old Union Jack spat upon by Persians and Egyptians and the Mongolian hybrids of South-east Asia. Please God, before this generation passes, we may see a revival of the British spirit, a restoration of the British Empire, and a firm movement by free British citizens to confine the Planners to spheres where their so called humanitarianism will not en danger our security in a merciless and ruthless world.
The Bloomsbury Planners have been instrumental in creating the new nations of Burma, India, Pakis tan, Indonesia, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, and encouraging the nationalist aspirations of several more. In doing this, they have contributed nothing to the world’s economic strength, international security and hope of permanent peace. But they have partially destroyed Britain, in whose freedom and strength lay humanity’s surest guarantee of freedom and progress.
Happily for us, while Britain re mains hamstrung by the queer products of the socialistic school of 1930-51, her responsibility for humanity’s freedom has been ac cepted by the United States; and, in this rather terrifying period of social re-settlement, we look to the
Stars and Stripes with the confidence that formerly we gave to tne union Jack.
Ir> .
GNORING the screeching chorus from the Asiatic countries, the United States is going steadily ahead with her plans for the Japanese Peace Treaty and, in seekmg co-operation in completing that document, she is cmicerned mostly with the small British nations of Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The Americans appreciate the South Pacific’s fears about a rearmed Japan—they suffered equally with us in meeting this cruel and treacherous foe in the jungles and (seas of the tropical islands—but they say, with complete realism, that it is better to take a chance on the re-establishment of Japan as a democratic barrier against Muscovite Communism, than to hold Japan indefinitely until the Russian can get his jackboot on her neck.
To help Australia and New Zea-
land to accept a Peace Treaty that they naturally dislike and distrust, America offers both a Security Pact: if the security of the little countries of the South Pacific is in danger, the Americans will immediately come to their help. Having that guarantee, we shall, of course, support America in framing the Japanese Peace Treaty; and, under American direction, the Treaty will be completed, despite the arguments and the shoutings of the 49 nations.
The United Nations is more or less a joke. Without the United States, it would collapse immediately, like a house of cards. Are we not now coming steadily, step by step, to the position which we should have occupied in 1945-46, when an armed and victorious Anglo - American Union could have taken complete control of the world’s affairs, and policed the world, until poor battered humanity had had a chance to establish permanent peace, based on individual freedom?
Planters, Robbed of £3O per Ton, are Given 55/- !
rpHE Australian decision to reduce X the Stabilisation Fund deduc tion by 60/- per ton, and give the Papua-New Guinea planters an other 55/- per ton (retaining the other 5/- for costs, or something) is nothing to cheer about.
The concession is very long over due. The Stabilisation Fund became unnecessary from the moment that the MOF 9-years contract was en tered into. But Canberra went stubbornly on with the Fund. The Fund now is conservatively esti mated at some £1,500,000; and not one of the men who have been com pelled to subscribe to it is likely to get any real benefit from it.
The Fund probably is earning over £40,000 per annum in interest. The planters should never cease to urge that this sum, at least, shall be spent each year for the direct bene fit of the planting industry.
In respect of the two more im portant demands of the planters— that the Australian copra-crushers foe made to pay world parity for P NG copra, and that the MOP con tract price be revised in the light of the British Socialists’ trick of devaluing Sterling after the con tract was made —there is nothing at all reassuring in the Minister’s statement.
It is an iniquitous thing that the Australian crushers should be al lowed to buy P-NG copra at little more than world parity. If the crushers are not allowed to export, then they probably get little benefit themselves; but the Australian con
sumers do get substantial benefit.
And why should they, seeing that New Guinea consumers are forced by Australia to pay world-market and not Australian rates for all essential goods imported from Aus tralia?
For at least a year, the P-NG pro ducers have been receiving, from Britain, as the result of a trick, a little more than half world parity.
They have been getting about £5O Australian per ton when, if they had been paid in the currency agreed upon when the contract was made, they would have been getting at least £BO. In the circumstances, the concession to them of another miserable 55/- per ton is not an im pressive gesture.
Some of Canberra’s more ancient bureaucrats seem to think that the P-NG planters are making huge profits on a copra rate of over £5O per ton. No doubt, grandfather did very nicely on anything over £l2 per ton for copra. But everything has changed since then. Most costs have more than quadrupled—in fact, there is no real basis for compari son. An analysis probably would show that it is impossible now to produce copra profitably at rates under £35 per ton.
In view of what may be discerned on the economic horizon. P-NG planters (and Fiji, BSI and Samoa planters) are entitled to at least the price they were promised in 1949 which is 30 per cent, more than the price now quoted in terms of de valued Sterling.
Rabaul Declines to go to Rapopo
THE effect of the Australian Govemment’s economy drive (as a means of curbing inflation) in relation to Papua-New Guinea development is not yet clear, although it has been already
suggested that the Territories’ hos pital plan may become an early casualty, Part of the Menzies’ anti-inflation plan is to cut down State and Corn monwealth public works. Each
State has protested vigorously thas all its public projects are vitall;! necessary. This makes it prett;J certain that some developmemtae work in P-NG will be cut—if fo;c no other reason, then because thu people of P-NG are voteless anc what the Commonwealth says, goes^ One of the Commonwealth’s moss grandiose money-spending plans iki relation to New Guinea —and, as far as the residents of Rabaul arn concerned, the most useless—is th«r decision to abandon Rabaul anc build a new town and a new pori about 20 miles to the southward: near Kokopo.
The feelings of Rabaul citizens — and their more practical alternative, —are set out in the report of th*r Rabaul Advisory Council meeting, elsewhere in this issue.
The decision to “move Rabaull. was first made after the 1937 erupq tion and, at that stage, it probably was a feasible plan. The desire then, was to move the capital oo New Guinea, with its central adb ministration, to a volcano-free areas it was not intended to abandoic the port of Rabaul as an outleo for the produce of the New Britair area.
Rabaul has the best harbour iri the South Pacific. It is the sol*l< reason for the existence of Rabauli The plan of Rabaul’s Advisor;*!
Council to retain this magnificenn natural asset, while removing thui commercial and residential area oo the town from the feet of the volI( canoes to Nonga, a few miles norths ward, and to build good roads t(J give easy access to the harbour, ii sane, sensible and suited to these: times when the building of a dog§ kennel or a fish pond, much less i complete town and a new harboun is beset with every imaginable diffifi culty. Sooner or later the Rabaur. volcanoes will erupt again. But all. available data indicate that Rabam. townsfolk will have ample waminjn and could get away from danger. .
Ten million pounds of Australian, taxpayers’ money won’t make Kokoo: po into a port. God and the voile canoes produced Rabaul harbour for nothing; it would be plans commonsense—a commodity we nn longer expect from Governmenttr and their expert advisers —to g§ on using it instead of building poor substitute at enormous cossc with money and materials thasi could be more usefully employes elsewhere.
It is, perhaps, as well that thri; average Australian taxpayer has: been reduced to the order of dumtti driven cattle. He might otherwise ask why his tax money is to hi used for such projects as the buildbi ing of Rapopo and an adjacems port, which the residents of thlj area do not want and for whic.oi there appear no sound reasons.
The sudden decision to get ouc of Rabaul, announced in panicktfc fashion in April, was brought abourc to a large extent by the erupqr
ion of Mt. Lamington in January, md the death of almost 4,000 >eople. It is by no means clear, lowever, that any move to Rapopo rould mean safety. Rapopo is, ac urding to some vulcanologists, learer the line of volcanic fault han is Rabaul.
New Guinea records suggest that t is the apparently-quiescent vol ;ano that is the greatest menace.
At all events, with the Australian Government toying with anti-infla ion measures, plus the extreme di ficulty of getting building materials, nachines or labour, the building of , town at Rapopo, or a port, appears i physical impossibility.
Governments who put their faith n experts can rarely be persuaded o see things through the eyes of he practical man on the spot. It s unlikely, therefore, that the sug gestions of the Advisory Council vill receive much attention. The >lan to abandon Rabaul and build it Rapopo will be retained —but low far will it go?
Meanwhile, Rabaul will continue is a town of rags and tatters, built )f abandoned war junk—fated to be jermanently “temporary.”
Mr. Norman Nelson, head of Nel son and Robertson, Ltd., Sydney, vho left, with Mrs. Nelson, on a eisurely world tour early this year, expects to return to Sydney, via Sweden, about October. Owing to ;he illness of her mother, Mrs.
Nelson cut short her tour, and re sumed hurriedly to Sydney, several veeks ago.
Commodore R, Dowling, Second Australian Naval Board Member, ivith a party of high ranking naval officers, returned from an inspection tour of the Manus Naval Base at the end of July. He complained that work on the base was being held up through lack of civilian tradesmen and that the Department )f Works and Housing gave a higher priority to the supply of materials to Port Moresby and Rabaul than it did to Manus.