Commentary

By The

Editorial

Staff.

‘Empire’ And

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Mmon Wealth

The word “Empire" has gone out of fashion recently and has been replaced largely by the word “Commonwealth”. I happen to be old fashioned in this respect and prefer “Empire” .

Outside our Commonwealth of Nations it is fashionable to condemn colonialism, but destructive criticism tends to ignore con- ■motive achievement: It tends “Iso to adopt a superficial view without probing deeply after basic issues .

The existence of the British Empire has been one of the primary factors for the spread of civilisation: it remains one of the principal bulwarks against moral and political decay . . .

The nature of the Empire has changeu but change should not be confused with retrogression.

The process which has taken place, and is taking place, in mam parts of the Empire is a progress which has been sought for and carefully planned . . -The Governor of Fiji, speaking at the Empire Day dinner in Suva.

Most people who knew the world ( torae W His d Excellences 1 remarks ■mce the when the

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and “Colony”. It is all part of the pattern laid down by the Soviet’s fellow-travellers, and which is de signed to weaken and destroy the structure of Western civilisation, Unhappily, it is not possible to show the pre-war world to the younger generation and so let those who increasingly exercise political power see the Western peoples as they once were. But, apart from the cranks and the starry - eyed planners, the senior classes are unanimous in their affirmation that pre-war conditions were much happier than those of to-day, and immensely better than the dread ful set-up that appears to be form ing on the horizon. In other words, “British Empire” was something to be proud of, and a lot pleasanter to live in than this drab and stumbling “British Commonwealth”.

What Actually Is

u/T?n\ir- u/rru

Wrung With Them?

Comment on the appointment of an Australian Treasury official to the post of Assistant Administrator in P-NG: ( N only three occasions in the

berraSelected £nm C fhe

Territories administrative services for the posts of Administrator or Assistant Administrator. Captain Pmney was appointed from the Pa P uan service to Norfolk Island: Mr - Leonard Murray, from the same service to Papua (where he remained only a few months before he was driven out by the Jap invaders, and kept out b y the savagery of a Socialist Ministry) ; and Mr. R. S.

Leydin was promoted recently from the Northern Territory to Nauru.

In all the innumerable other cases which we have observed, Canberra has gone to other services for its Administrators. Apparently, men engaged in the Papua and New Guinea public services come under some fatal disability; because, no matter how well they conduct themselves as District Commis sioners or Departmental heads, they are gently but firmly passed over when gentlemen are needed for the Territories’ top jobs.

In Sydney, they have Royal Com missions about all sorts of things.

Thousands of pounds, and a senior Judge’s valuable time, and acres of newspaper space, have been spent on an inquiry into why Mr. Studley- Ruxton’s ribs were sore. So surely we of the Territories may respect fully ask for a Royal Commission to find out what is wrong wit|[i the men of the P-NG public service, who may go so far —and no further.

Where Does Our

Security Lie?

EVERY archipelago in the South Pacific was interested in the overseas events in the last week end in June. While Sir Winston Churchill and President Eisenhower, in Washington, were hammering out the future shape of the Anglo- American world, the Prime Ministers of India and China (Messrs. Nehru and Chou-en-Lai, representing at least one billion people) were en gaged in a similar task in Delhi.

The Washington-Delhi discussions affect vitally the fate of all people, of all races, in the Pacific. Not one Pacific community, from Australia right down to the lowliest atoll, can retain its independence against this rising power in Asia, unless it has protection from an Anglo-American 3.111 b. rice Someone has suggested that New Guinea, Solomons and New Hebrides should immediately be placed under Australian protection, and that Fiji and Samoa should be regarded as the special care of New Zealand. If Asia develops new strength in the next decade in the way that it has done in the past ten years, Australia and New Zealand will not be able to protect themselves against Asia at all, let alone give security to smaller communities.

Jap Am, The

Libera T Or! —Ceylon

Do those who watch the inter national and inter-racial turmoil in Southern Asia, and wonder what the future holds for the South Pacific, in relation thereto, ever examine the attitude of the Asian nations towards Japan?

We are inclined to forget Japan as a factor in the Asian set-up.

Until World War 11, she was Asia’s leading nation, and a World Power.

She was completely smashed in 1942-45: all her teeth were drawn, so she could not bite any more;

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and she was deprived of her so called Empire. But she is coming back into international affairs.

While Britain builds up Germany st as a Western barrier against Communism. America is doing the tme for Japan, as an Eastern rrier. But will she stay there, as a kindly and obedient barrier?

Meanwhile, consider the words of ir Susanta de Fouseka, Foreign Minister of Ceylon (nominally the tied diplomat of a friendly unit of the British Commonwealth) ; 'The people of Ceylon have a special affection for Japan because they are not unmindful of the fact that countries of Southeast Asia achieved their independence far sooner than they would have done, as a direct result of Japan’s par ticipation in the war.”

'‘Participation”, forsooth!

The average historian believes vaat the independence of India, Pakistan, Burma, Ceylon, and ndonesia came about in the 1945oO period because the post-war socialist Government of Britain

oadgered, blundering and bemused,’

gave away a large part of the British Empire at least a decade oefore it was ready for self-govern ment, and forced the helpless Dutch to do the same in Indonesia. But Asian historians, apparently, are going to give the credit (or debit) to the gentlemen of Japan, who im posed three years of torture, murder and slavery upon the hapless Pacific 168 ° f SE Asia and SW t; Js“ er , Prime Minister Attlee nfng in O l f 94- S 50 ble " fOOted P ’ an '

Bishop Drops

A Brick

on the subject of Colonial- S? 1 ’ i*, \ s noted that in June himJif Adel ? lde letting 3 e f go at a luncheon party publicly said that “the French are charming people but rotten “ ?teht S ”in a H d “J Indo-CWna thenf” lts desire t 0 be rid of gare h f 11S on f n erta L n ne wspapers Fn French achievements ove?ln C lß7s a ' » When Pra nce took uvei m 1875, it was a worthless vnmr ry ’ swept Periodically °by re volutions, terrible famines and epidemics. The French by com s true ting roads, railways vast d S e . and irrigation works and region l ni n S order > it into a mfde it P^b dUCmg y ast we alth, and t ? 6 S( l cond largest rice-ex porting country in the wnriri Diseases have been checked anH the country, over the last Stf’vearf h lt b n m £ de increasingly literate.’ well-meani™ re gretted that these wen meaning reverend gentlemen

cannot keep their noses out of in ternational affairs of which they obviously have no knowledge.

Again The

Trustee Council!

“VIEW Guinea was a bureaucracy 11 where the Europeans held all the responsible posts and the natives the lesser posts” complained an Indian delegate at the Trustee ship Council in New York on June 29. He criticised the Australian Ad ministration for its failure to ap preciably reduce the illiteracy rate in the Territory. He was sure that, as there was so little improvement since 1920, there must be something wrong.

Australian Minister W. D. Forsyth wearily pointed out, for the ninety ninth time, that these New Guinea natives are extremely primitive; and that, before it is possible to reach

them and Introduce even a slight degree of literacy, it is necessary to break through the barrier im posed by the facts that (a) a large proportion of the people have had little if any contact with Europeans and (b) they speak innumerable languages—there is no common tongue.

One wonders how long the Trusteeship farce is to continue, and why Australia should be harassed P/ .this type of uninstructed idealist. Sooner or later, New Guinea will have to be taken over completely by Australia. Why not sooner?

Native Producer S

Viewpoint

THE high prices of Islands pro duce provide the new Native Co-operative Societies of New Guinea and elsewhere with

abundant and profitable revenue.

As these new producers gather in the returns, one wonders whether they imagine that life was always like this—whether they ever will be lieve there were days when the Master was trying to keep his plan tation going, and feed his family and his labour-line, on the £4 per ton he received from Copra. If they think that prices were always like this, they also may believe the silver-tongued laddies who try to tell them that they and their country have, been ruthlessly ex ploited for half a century by the Europeans.

About Those

Asiatic Reds

AN excited correspondent in Aus tralia savagely reproves PIM for “pro-Americanism”; and asked: “Isn’t America, by refusing China admission to the United Nations, and encouraging the French to fight on in Indo-China, arousing Asia against us, and rendering unsafe the whole future of the people in the South Pacific?”

Which is a very slick bit of Fel low-Traveller propaganda. Here is the answer.

Communist China is a militarily aggressive nation, which never ceases to spit venomous hatred against the United States. This is a typical extract from a very re cent Red China pamphlet: “We must hate America, because she is the Chinese people’s implacable enemy.

“We must despise America because it is a corrupt imperialist nation, the world centre of reaction and decadency. We must look down upon America because she is a paper tiger and entirely vulner able to defeat.”

Red China invaded South Korea and precipitated the Korean War.

Red China’s troops are fighting the French in Indo-China today. Red China supplies the Terrorists in Malaya and keeps that rebellipn alive. The Charter of UNO limits membership to ‘‘peace-loving States”. Is China in that category?

In Indo-China, hitherto a French dependency, there are 30 million people, divided between the re co°nised States of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. America’s policy, which France now has fully ac cepted, is that these three States shall be established as independent countries. Red China (with Russia in the background) says that it also wants the three States made in dependent”— but on terms which mean that all three inevitably will be absorbed into the Red frame work behind the Iron Curtain. No Western nation w’ould agree to th lt is all part of Stalin’s Cold-War pattern. The Muscovite plotters do not want any kind of a settlement pxcent on Communist terma. ine plan is to keep us all armed, alarmed and divided until our economic structure begins to crack.

Then Hey for the revolution!