Malo For The Nauruans
p. 49 · Read in the full issue
“/ know most of the islands of the South Pacific, and I can think of no more suitable home for the Nauruans than Mala, in the New Hebrides group ”
THE speaker was Pastor A. J.
Stewart, of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, who, in the course of many years of active work, probably was the best-known travelling director of missionary enterprises in the Pacific Islands. He is now retired and living quietly in Sydney.
Malo is a well-wooded, wellwatered, fairly hilly island near Santo, in the New Hebrides—34 miles in circumference—and almost all cultivable. It is separated from Santo only by the narrow Segond Channel. Except that it has a few
European-owned plantations, and native villagers numbering perhaps 300, it is unpopulated and undeve loped. In Pastor Stewart’s opinion, i t wou ld be an ideal and healthy home for the Nauruans *h e nussionary did not comment on one objection to the plan namely, that the New Hebrides is a Condominium, jealously guarded by the British and French, with Aus tralian enterprise peculiarly suspect.
Nevertheless, Britain has as much interest in Nauru as Australia has.