One Reason Why The

Our Neighbours

In N. Guinea

Dutch Hold On

IT is not generally known that the Dutch have' a sentimental, as well as sound commercial and political reasons for holding on to Western New Guinea.

When, with the help and sympathy of the United States, the Indo nesians drove the Dutch out of the East Indies —where they had been established for 350 years and where they had done a magnificent job of -colonisation —there was a mixed community (Dutch and Indonesian) of at least 500,000.

The Javanese adventurers who seized the Government of Indonesia —and still hold it more or less— made “a dead set” at those Euronesians.

A large proportion of the half million had been brought up and educated as people of Dutch status, and they were deeply integrated with the Dutch-Indonesian economy.

But they were told, in so many words, by the Jakarta bureaucrats that they must announce their future allegiance—Dutch or Indo nesian, If they chose Dutch, they were

persecuted in the same way that the Dutch were persecuted. If they chose Indonesian, they were per mitted to remain in Indonesia, but were treated as pariahs.

Thus, those Euronesians who chose Dutch status were virtually without a country; and it was on their behalf that the Dutch showed enterprise and energy in developing Western New Guinea, where there now is a large oil industry and a rapidly-developing plantation in dustry.

Thousands of Euronesians from Indonesia —and especially Java — now are settled in Western New Guinea; and thousands more are headed that way. That is why the Territory is so valuable to the Dutch, even though figures do not suggest great tangible wealth.

They are a type of neighbour whom Australia is glad to see in a territory so close to her borders.

Imagine the kind of treatment these people would receive if the enlightened gentlemen of the United Nations succeeded in having Western New Guinea transferred from the Netherlands to Indonesia! t The Tongan boxer, Johnny Halafihi, beat Neville Rowe, Aus tralia, by a technical knock-out in the third round of a scheduled eight-round bout at Leicester, in England, on March 4,