Yesterday

In its issue for October,

1942, “PIM” expressed the

belief that a turning point had

been reached in the Pacific war,

as five months had passed since

the Japanese had reached the

farthest limits of their terri

torial gains—then Tulagi and

Western Burma. Other items in that issue of 20 years ago were: — The Japanese were reported to have occupied the phosphate island of Nauru, and the Administrator, Lieutenant-Colonel P. R. Chalmers, was presumed to be a prisoner. • • • M. Henri Sautot, Governor of New Caledonia and High Com missioner of the French Pacific Colonies, who first rallied the French people of the South Pacific to Free Prance in 1940, was appointed Governor of the French Equatorial African colony of Oubangai-Chari. • * • Men in Tahiti were facing the “terrifying prospect of being lost in a jungle of whiskers” because the war had brought an end to the supply of razor blades on the island. » * • All churches and schools in Rarotonga were closed because of an outbreak of measles—a more serious epidemic than the one of 1938. • • • A Tahiti correspondent reported that the first Irish potatoes known to mature in the Islands had been brought to Papeete from the island of Rapa early in July. * » * The Rev. C. O. Lelean, OBE, an outstanding figure in Fijian mission work, died in Melbourne on September 14. He had devoted 34 years of his life to work with the Methodist Overseas Mission in Fiji. * * * Four Roman Catholic mis sionaries at the Marist Mission at Ruacatu on Guadalcanal. BSIP, were reported to have been bayoneted to death by the Japanese. News of these murders and of the murder of three Angli can missionaries on the north-east coast of Papua had come as a sickening shock to missionary bodies in Australia.