Remember?

Do Von Remember?

In November, 1939, transport

trade, development, administration

—all the normal activities of the

Pacific territories—awaited the out

come of events in Europe, as World

War II entered the third month.

But as things turned out events

were to be influenced much more

by war in the Pacific, which hadn’t yet started. But it was building up.

Here are some extracts from that issue of “Pacific Islands Monthly” of 20 years ago: What the New Caledonia newspapers describe as “the waltz of the Governors” was still going on in the French colony.

It had recently had five governors in five months. * * * Under the heading “Gay and Lively”, “PIM” reported that Port Moresby, “with its steadily growing community of oil com pany employees and members of the military, naval and air forces, has be come a gay and lively little town com pared with the somewhat dismal little backwater of 10 or 20 years ago”. * * ♦ In Sydney young Crown Prince Tuboutoa, then doifig law at Sydney University (he is now Prince Tungi, Prime Minister of Tonga) lectured to the Pacific Islands Club on the transition of Tonga, He was given an enthusiastic welcome and “PIM” commented on the fact “that an educated Tongan, in ' formal evening dress, could lecture in a soft, cultured voice for an hour and a half to an intelligent and in terested European audience, speaks volumes for the adaptability of Polynesian races”. »!• In the New Hebrides a French planter on the island of Malekula was murdered by natives —the first European to be so murdered in the New Hebrides since 1923. * * * A report from Western Samoa said the war had so far caused little change in life there. Uniforms of the Samoan De fence Force were more frequently seen and there was a gradual increase in prices.

Mr. D. R. Eden was appointed Food Con troller. The copra price was 4/6 for 100 lbs.

The war had knocked on the head the plans to build a much-needed road be tween Salamaua and Wau in New Guinea, which the gold miners had been asking for for years. That is what was an nounced anyhow, although it wasn’t many years before the Army, under stress of war, built the road. * * ♦ There was an argument going on about whether the recent outbreak of mis appropriation of Tongan Government funds by public servants was due to the fact that the public servants were underpaid.

But some correspondents seemed to think that the lack of efficient supervision, and not small pay cheques, was at the root of the problem. * * * The price of copra was still going up after getting an impetus by the outbreak of war. And cocoa growers were begin ning to see a rainbow, too, with cocoa selling from £A36 to £A3B a ton.