NAURU AGREEMENT

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 228, 21 June 1920, Page 5

NAURU AGREEMENT

IRTHER REFERENCES IN HOUSE

OF COMMONS

URGENT NEED FOR MORE

PHOSPHATE J By Telegraph-Press Assoeiatlon-OopyrlgM (Rec. June 20, 5.5 p.m.) London, June 18. In moving in the House of Commons the second reading of the Bill confirm, ing the agjeemept between the Imperial, the Australian, and the New Zealand Governments regarding Nauru, Colonel Leslie Wilson emphasised tho richness of the phosphate deposits on; the island. lis pointed out that the natives keenly desired to remain under British rule. Colonel Wilson also emphasised the urgency of the need for more phosphate in view of the world shortage of wheat in

1919 and tho exhaustion of soils. Ifo quoted an estimate in a report to tho New Zealand Parliament that there wore at least eighty to one hundred million tons of phosphate on Nauru, which is beiieved to be the largest reserve of high-grade phosphate rock in the world, wjiile the deposit at Ocean Island is believed to ba deeper. The question of the Nauru agreement was again raised in the Houso of Commons to-day. Lieutenant-Commander Ifenworthy maintained that owing to the distance between Nauru Island and the United Kingdom, the arrangement would not be a good commercial proposition for that country. Colonel Wilson, in replying, pointed out that before the wav Germany took tall the phosphate 6he could get at Nauru to Stettin, an ever greater distance than to Epgland, and that ft company paid between 25 and 50 per cent, dividends,

Major-General Sir Newton Moore congratulated the Government on the arrangement. which would be of the greatest value to agriculture and would mean dheap wheat in many countries. Several members repeated the Opposition argument regarding the League of Nations aspect of the question.—Router.