GERMANY'S EX-COLONIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 29, 4 February 1937, Page 6

GERMANY'S EX-COLONIES.

New Zealand may feel flattered at being described as a "Power," but if a report from Berlin is correct, Mr. Savage's Government, among others, will receive before long a suggestion, proposal or demand, supported by economic arguments, that all colonies formerly German, and now held under League mandates, be returned to Germany. It is unlikely that the Germans are or have been made conscious of a special and overwhelming need for the return of Western Samoa, or that, if one or more of their major colonies were restored i to them, they would press their claim to a small and unprofitable territory in the South Pacific; but New Zealand, as a party to the Treaty of Versailles, and as a League mandatory, is directly interested in the development of this particular German policy. No doubt the ) whole question will be fully I considered at the Imperial Conference, and: an endeavour made to form a united Empire front. Meanwhile we must await the formal; presentation of the German case, which when received should be studied not in the spirit of 1919, but with regard to the realities of 1937J