Remember?

Do Yon Remember?

Twenty years ago the Second World War was just on a year old.

The phony stage had ended and, in the Pacific, the French possessions had still not got themselves out of the dilemma occasioned by the

collapse of Metropolitan France.

Here are some other extracts from

the August issue of “PIM”, 1940:

W*H ! rt : In Papua they were objecting to new taxes (2V 2 per cent, primage, 3V 2 per cent, on gold, and 5 per cent, on rubber—when the price was 8y 2 d per lb, or more). Mer chants and planters said that it was a “class tax”—designed to get the Adminis tration out of bother with its pensions account which was £9,000 in the red that year. The budget, which just had been announced. provided for revenue of £176,809 and expenditure of £183,212. * ♦ ♦ The copra industry in the South Pacific faces the biggest crisis of its history, said “PIM”. “The European copra market has disappeared. Great Britain has six months supply. Even if there were markets, freighters cannot be spared from urgent war work to lift copra from Island ports.

Governments are now planning to give sustenance relief to planters, in the hope that plantations somehow can be carried on until a market is available.” * * * Seems that bombers cost less 20 years ago. Fiji raised enough in one day— £4o,oo0 —to buy two of them. Two gold mining companies and the sugar company Weighed in with £lO,OOO each and there were other handsome donations from firms and individuals. About that time, the London Press reported that there was already a Colonial airfleet operating, in that £1,600,000 had been subscribed from the Empire (yes, they called it that, 20 years ago), which was sufficient to buy 40 bombers and 160 Spitfires. These days, of course, not one jet plane worth a damn seems to cost less than the whole £1,600,000. ♦ ♦ * Nothing’s new, of course. “PIM” re ported in that issue that Indian agitators had caused unrest among Fiji cane growers and, as a result, sugar produc tion would be much smaller than usual.

The CSR company had introduced, the year previously, a new system of paying growers for their cane. The growers were convinced, by agitators, that they were being got at, and they stopped planting cane. * * * Crew members of a Messageries Mari times vessel, on a voyage between Mar seilles and Australia, and in an Eastern, Polynesia port when France capitulated, were still trying to sort themselves out.

French officers and Madagascan sailors argued for days as to whether they should return to their families or sail into a British port. Finally they did the latter —where the ship was taken over by the British Admiralty, but the men were given a completely free choice as to whether they should join de Gaulle, or be returned to France.