Do you Remember?
p. 85 · Read in the full issue
Sir Hubert Murray, Lieutenant-Governor of Papua, told a Pacific Islands Club luncheon in Sydney that Europeans in Papua needed just as much protection as the Papuans, according to PIM of March, 1939.
There was sometimes a danger, Sir Hubert said, that an Administrator might be carried away by his duty to the natives and forget what he owed to the Europeans in the community. An Administrator should be both pro-native and pro-European.
“PIM” also reported that issue: Planters in the BSI were being treated as “foreigners”, complained one of them, Mr C. R. Bignell, to the Australian news papers. “We are ruled from Fiji, and they don’t know much about the country and don’t seem to care,” growled Mr.
Bignell. * * * The military had moved in {« Moresby, and selected areas for a barracks (Four Mile) and an airstrip (Wards), and had turned their attentions to p aEa Hill. Sir Hubert Murray caused a stir in Australian Cabinet when gested that a militia unit of Papuan natives be formed. * * * The London copra market was settlor better, trith an Increase ot about £1 » ton in the previous two months, Europe was beginning to buy up. * * *
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the future of the Pacific—words that turned out to be remarkably prophetic.
The Japanese, he said, were “coming south’’, and Britain had to decide what it was going to do about it, and Aus tralia, too. The foreign merchants’ day was over in China and Japan, he said.
Whichever side won the war in China, would exclude the foreign trader. This was apparent in China years before the trouble with the Japanese, and there was no reason to think war would bring a permanent change of heart by the Chinese. * * * “PIM” reported an editorial in the Japanese “Osaka Asahi”, which said that the Dutch Pacific possessions were the next area to be conquered after China, and that Holland “should become conscious of the new situation” and sell Dutch New Guinea to Japan. * ♦ ♦ Saying they were unable to earn a reasonable living despite their efforts. 27 i esidents of Norfolk Island reached Auck land in search of work. They said 100 settlers had left in the previous three months.