Commentary ...

fliat Know They Of Islands

fho Only P-NG Know!

I ATS off to the hard-working men and women who organised the Political Science convention j Canberra in late January, to scuss Australia’s interests and •oblems in the Pacific Islands. We » not think that much was hieved; but the effort surely was the right direction.

The emphasis was all on New nnea, although Australia’s re onsibilities and obligations extend uch farther into the east and rth-east. What do they know of e South Pacific, who only New linea know!

Ihe principal talks came from linly academic folk, who never ve sailed a little boat, or planted coconut, or kicked the behind of cheeky native labourer in New linea. Yet they got most of the lelight in the newspapers and >adcasting. rhere were sound and experienced n there from New Guinea, like F. Bunting, and lan Downs and orge Whittaker, and they were ;ouraged to make contributions to talk. But they were given ond place to the academicians; i very, very little of what they 1 got through to the Australian )lic. fiblic opinion was given little t was new or practical. That ; why we think that little was ieved. : does not seem that the Aus ian Institute of Political Science has accepted as fact that tralia’s interests in Solomons, 7 Hebrides and Fiji are large, growing; and that Australia, mse of her size and importance the South Pacific, must take a ;er and bigger share in seeking fiution to the growing problems :he dozen Territories which lie :he South Pacific between New nea and French Oceania, tiese Australian students seem med to run away from South ific problems. The only men ng the chief speakers who ?d their eyes beyond the idaries of New Guinea and ua were Dr. J. Andrews (Sydney fersity) and Mr. J. R. Kerr; they looked only at British mons and Dutch New Guinea, possible units in a planned leration” or “United States” of mesia. ie political planners may run f; but the merchants drag ralia steadily eastwards. )i is a big and important sh Colony. Take out of Fiji Colonial Sugar Company, Burns 3 & Co., W. R. Carpenter &

Co., the Banks of NSW and ANZ, Emperor Gold Mines, Qantas and their associated interests, and there would be nothing left in Fiji except an economy-less population of 175,000 Indians and 145,000 Fijians.

Much of the Solomon Islands’ economy is Australian-owned.

Britain and France administer the New Hebrides Condominium —but the Australian Commonwealth Government owns about 80,000 acres of the best land there.

If the Australian Institute will forget the professors for a while, and look at the Pacific Islands through spectacles that are less politically scientific and more realistic, they might assist materially in the planning of Aus tralia’s future course.

The High Incidence

Of Japanese Appendicitis

THE incidence of appendicitis among Japanese fishermen must amount to an occupational disease. Few hospitals in the larger Pacific Islands ports have not been honoured by a Japanese patient by now. There was another case of it in New Guinea last month (see story page 143).

The cheeky behaviour of some of these people never fails to get lesidents’ hackles up especially those whom our NG correspondent describes as having long memories.

It would be a mistake to imagine that these people are spying; the Japanese must know almost every thing that there is to be known about New Guinea.

It is probably something best y/ritten off to the mystery of the inscrutable East: they probably like to show that there is more than one way of entering forbidden territory.

In the light of reason and commonsense the Japanese cannot be ostracised forever, but these in quisitive fishermen are not doing anything for the Jap cause. Most people in the SW Pacific feel that America’s famous writer of nonsense verse, Ogden Nash, had the last word to say about them when—away back in 1940—he wrote: How courteous is the Japanese; He always says, “Excuse it please.”

He climbed into his neighbour's garden And smiles, and says, “I beg your pardon”; He bows and grins a friendly grin And calls his hungry family in; He grins and bows a friendly bow; “So sorry, this my garden now”.

For a PM: Indifference

For a Queen: Acclaim

THE presence of Harold Macmillan —first British Prime Minister ever to visit the South Pacific— did not exactly stir the Australian nation. There were no “crowds”, and the few people who did gather in places were unenthusiastic, though quite friendly.

Most newspapers did their best to demonstrate warm British- Australian friendship; but the Fairfax-owned group quite evidently did not like Mr. Macmillan.

The Sydney Morning Herald was cold, but correct; the Sydney Sun was unfriendly (“What Is He Here For?” squawked one of its “feature writers”); and the Sunday Sun Herald ran a particularly nasty story