PACIFIC MANDATES.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 74, 27 March 1919, Page 5

PACIFIC MANDATES.

EQUALITY OF TERMS.

BETWEEN JAPS AND BRITISH.

THE CLOSED DOOR PERMITTED

PARIS, March 26.

Discussion concerning the Pacific mandates continues. For reasons at present unexplained, Mr Hughes and Mr Massey have accepted the British view that the Japanese must have similar mandates for the Caroline and Marshall Islands 'as Australia and New Zealand have south of the Equator. The Japanese have been most insistent on the point, and the British agree that a refusal would be invidious and unfair.

These mandates will forbid fortifications, but will permit the closed door regarding trade, immigration, and other policies. The weakness in the case for different mandates hae been Samoa, which is not contiguous to New Zealand, and is therefore judged on all fours with the Caroline Islands. Mr Hughes is fighting for one point of difference. He wishes the clauses relating to the junction of the islands with the mandatory countries after a petition from the natives to be eliminated from the Samoan and Japanese mandates, but retained in the New Guinea mandate, on the ground that the extreme contiguity of the latter islands to Australia justifies this amount of difference in the mandates.—(United Service.)