yesterday

Twenty years ago (a month

before Pearl Harbour),

“PlM’s” editor looked into his

crystal-ball and came up with

this: “Probably before this

journal is in distribution, Japan

will have made a decision

which will mean peace or war in the Pacific. If it is to be

war, all British and Allied

communities in the Pacific will

enter a period of great dif

ficulty and danger, the inevit

able end of which will be the

removal of a menace which,

for too long, has rendered life

uneasy under the Southern

Cross”.

Here are other extracts from “PIM” of November, 1941; The South Pacific Copra Market ing Pool, set up to try to revive the industry which had collapsed with the withdrawal of shipping from the Pacific at the beginning of World War 11. began what was to be a short life. The copra outlook was much improved, it was reported, sales at £B/10/- f.o.b. per ton having taken place at Rabaul. ♦ • * New Hebrides was concerned at the sudden freezing of the supply of Tonkinese labour to its planta tions. Indentured labour from Indo-China was something French planters had enjoyed since 192! and the privilege had been extended to British planters in the NH just before France collapsed in June, 1940. As a result of this collapse, French Indo-China and the French Pacific colonies found themselves on different sides of the political fence—French Pacific rallying to de Gaulle but Indo-China support ing the Vichy administration. * ♦ As well as copra troubles, the whole SW Pacific area was in the grip of drought. The coast of New Britain was reported brown and dry where it wasn’t blackened by bush fires. Alluvial mining opera tions were being affected in Morobe by lack of water; on the Sepik, sago swamps were drying up and many were burnt out. Port Moresby was “drought-stricken”, while further east things weren’t much better. Even Woodlark Island, notorious for excessive rainfall, was short of water. In New Caledonia, the drought had gone on for many months and cattle were dying in hundreds. * * • Nine European officers of the “Notou”, sunk by a German raider between Sydney and Noumea a year previously, had been released in Paris by the Germans. The Master was a Breton but the others were New Caledonian-born.