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Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 167, 8 April 1908, Page 6

The story of British mismanagement in the Pacific is an old one, and has been_ frequently related in the Australasian Press, and particularly in the "Sydney Morning Herald," which has for many: decades fought an almost fruitless fight against the British official apathy which lias again and again thrown away unequalled opportunities fpr the extension of British authority in the archipelagos of the Pacific. The depressing story;—which was summed up in-striking fashion in the chronological history which we reprinted yesterday—is apparently attracting some much-required notico in England'just now. A cable message gave us yesterday morning some | comments by the London "Standard" upon a pamphlet embodying a series of articles that appeared in the "Sydney Morning Herald" last year,' and it is to be hoped that they will receive careful attention from British statesmen. The disregard of the views of Australia and New Zealand upon the New Hebrides is still a fresh memoir, and still fresh, too, is the shock of the .discovery that in this Imperial cen-

tuiy tlie of British colonisation is still hampered by tlie official neglect and discouragement that had to , lie fought against by the pioneers of British settlement everywhere south of the Equator. To Australasians there seems to have been little change since the dark ages when British statesmen could declare thjit the Empire had "too many colonies already," and when Lord Granville could refuse to spend £12,000 on buying Delagoa Bay, and so secure South Africa for Britain from the very beginning. The attitude of the Colonial Office was well summed up by Mr. Deakin at the .last Imperial Conference as "a certain impenetrability, a certain remoteness, perhaps geographically justified, a certain weariness of people much pressed with affairs, and-greatly overburdened, whose natural desire is to say 'Kindly postpone this, do not press that, do not trouble us.; what does it. matter ? We have enough to do already; you are. a self-governing community, why not manage to carry on without, troubling us? The record of lost opportunities is a long and ' .painful one. At one time Manila'was British : it is now in America's hands. Hawaii was offered to Britain more than once. New Caledonia, once British, is now_ French. Tahiti was thrown at Britain's head, and left to Prance. Eiji was annexed only after more than" one offer of annexation was refused by the British authorities, and after 22 years of pressure from Australian quarters. Tonga was twice refused, but was annexed after 56 years of reluctance. Samoa's fate New Zealanders know specially well. Sir Henry Parkes was forbidden to establish a ''British' Settlement in New Guinea in 1874, and again in 1878; a British protectorate was possible in 1879, but was refused; Queensland's annexation of the non-Dutch portion of the country was disavowed in 188'!.■ As for the New Hebrides, now under the joint control of France and England, and fast becoming more a French than an English archipelago, it is enough to say that in 1880 ail tlie European settlers were British. New Britain was lost by deliberate rejection. _ The writer of the "Sydney Morning Herald's'-' articles, indeed, ~ hardly exaggerated the facts when he declared that . "Germany has scarcely a colony that was not first offered to Britain by the original inhabitants or the first 1 immigrants," and that "as for the islands'of the Pacific it is.no fault of British Governments , that one of them remains British." While the Colonial Office has been actually hostile to British expansion in the Pacific, and at the best apathetic, the _ other Powers have been keen to assist their colonists. According to Dr. Bowie, an„interview with whom we published on Monday, "France is at present doing her utmost to foster, her' trade ,in the New. Hebrides. The French settlers have always had all the help that their Go-, vernmeht could give them. They have had grants of land, the recruiting of labour has been made easy for them, and they get a rebate of hall the duty on. all the produce they send to any French port." The. Englisli'-settlers, oil the other .hand, have • had a hard uphill, fight, v. Their 1 only, encouragement' seems-'to be an "Australian' tariff concession that Dr. Bowie declares to be "utterly inadequate." No ' doubt the "Standard" is only doing justiceto the Colonial Office in laying a share of tlie blame for the loss of the Pacific upon; the, absorption of the British Parliament and the electorates in "party conflicts and parochial cares." It unfortunately; appears, to be the case that many, British men of affairs imagine that in order to' "think Imperially" it is only necessary, to think of tariffs. When the Panama Canal is completed , the strategic centre of I gravity of the world will lie in the Pacific, aiid it is for this reason, as' well as for purely commercial 'reasons, \that Australasia should never allow . British statesmen to forget what has been lost,'nor cease to keep the Western Pacific problem well to the front. , "The Colonial Office," says the contributor of'the "Sydney 1 Morning Herald's" articles, "must cure its,elf, of its blindness and the Fqreign"Ofiice of its dilatoriness. 'They must become penetrable, accessible, even eager for knowledge; they must think Imperially. They must learn to study—as the good public servant will aiways study—not so much the whims of those who appoint them as the needs of those for whose service they are appointed. The habit will be slow and difficult of acquirement, no doubt;_ but, until it is acquired the Empire will be in grave danger both from aggression outside it and from discontents within."