FRENCH COLONIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 49, 26 August 1940, Page 3

FRENCH COLONIES

THE PACIFIC

AUSTRALIA'S INTEREST

DEFENCE AND TRADE

Special interest has been evinced in Australia in the agreement reached by the Havana Conference as to the measures to be taken by the American Republics to prevent German iti* terference with existing colonial rights. While Australia has not taken any diplomatic steps regarding the French Pacific Colonies, it is clear that the Australian Government cannot but be concerned at any attempt to alter the status quo. The nature of Australia's interest in these colonies was explained in a broadcast given recently in Australia.

Recently a French business man arrived in Australia from Noumea. He is M. Paul Vois, managing director oi! the Societe de Nickel, a large nickel mining company. His mission concerns the economic future of New Caledonia, and the necessity of close economic relations between .the territory and Australia. M. Vois said that the people in his colony were anxious to fight for the Allied cause, but at the moment, as the position of New Caledonia was not clearly defined, the administration was obliged to wait upon events. Australians are apt to forget that part of the French empire lies very near their east coast —close, that is, to the more thickly-populated and highlydeveloped parts of Australia. The distance between New Caledonia and Brisbane is actually less than the distance between Sydney and Adelaide. Like the Dutch East Indies, the border of which runs with that of our own territories in New Guinea, New CaleIdonia is well within the strategic area | with which Australian defence must be concerned. FESTOON OF ISLANDS. With the New Hebrides (which are under joint British and French rule) to the north, New Caledonia forms a curved group of islands almost continuous with New Guinea and the Dutch archipelago. These French and part-French islands which lie from 800 to 1000 miles from Queensland form the tail of a long festoon of islands screening—or, from the other aspect, overlooking the whole of Northern Australia between Darwin and Brisbane. No Australian can now be indifferent to happenings in those territories. New Caledonia in particular has been brought clearly into Australian minds by the recent opening of the Pan-American Airways Trans-Pacific Airline, which uses Noumea as one of. its bases. There is another group of French islands in the Pacific, consisting of the Society Islands and Marquesas. They lie on the far side of Fiji, in the Eastern Pacific. All the French Pacific islands are in the southern tropical zone and stretch from the Tropic of Capricorn a little more th&n half-way to the East. They consequently enjoy warm climates, tempered by the fresh trade winds. New Caledonia is somewhat cooler and healthier than the New Hebrides1, which are hot and humid in summer and subject to malaria. Unlike the coral islands, most of the French pos»sessions are high and rugged. They are volcanic in origin, except New Caledonia, which consists of ancient sedimentary and igneous rocks, a peculiarity to which it owes its mineral wealth. The people are Polynesians in the eastern groups, Melanesians in the New Hebrides (where there are about 60,000 natives) and in New Caledonia (about 30,000). The chief white settlements are in New Caledonia and the Societies, and Asiatic immigrants have been permitted to enter in moderate numbers. In Tahiti, for example, there are about 500 Chinese, who control most of the retail trade.

The Society and Marquesas Islands have been French possessions since 1842. They produce copra and vanilla principally; most of their exports have in the past gone to France, but the largest supplier of manufactured goods has been the U.S.A. These islands have room for development if sufficient labour and cheaper communications with world markets could be provided. Their white settlers number about 5000. THE CONDOMINIUM. The New Hebrides are jointly ruled by Britain and France under the Condominium of 1906. The scheme has not been a great success, and has hampered development; the white population is a little more than a' thousand, of whom over 80 per cent, are French. French interests have outstripped British largely because the French, planters have been permitted to import labour from Indo-China. Although half the goods imported into the New Hebrides are of Australian origin, French merchants handled three-quarters of the trade. The most important French possession in the Pacific is New Caledonia, acquired in 1853. There are over 15,000 French colonists, who employ labourers imported from Java and Indo-China—there are about 12,000 Asiatics in the colony. Coffee and copra are produced, but minerals are the most important resources. Nickel, chromium, and iron are exploited, while there are undeveloped resources of coal, copper, and manganese. The colony produces more than a tenth of the world's chromium and nearly a tenth of its nickel. The nickel is especially important, for otherwise Canada has a practical monopoly of world supplies. , New Caledonia has thus a unique value among Pacific Islands. Japan has recently shown her interest in New Caledonia by financing aa iron mining company at Goro. Australians are always quick to notice any southward extension of Japanese activity. AUSTRALIA AS MARKET. Australians have a long-term interest, too, in the French experiment in white settlement in the tropics. Australia, in her own experiment in Queensland, has determined to master the tropics with the use of white labour only. Forty years ago she sent back to their islands the Kanakas who had been brought in to grow sugar. Today, less than a thousand miles away, the French in New Caledonia are pursuing an entirely different method of tropical development. In employing Javanese and Annamite labour in agriculture and industry, they have set up plantation and indenture systems comparable to those of the East Indies [and Ceylon. In the same latitude as jthe French plantations white Australians do heavy manual labour. Should their experiment fail, other peoples are already at their door. The small populations and the isolation of the French colonies would make it difficult for them to adequately defend themselves. Economic considerations are causing; them to think that Australia might offer a suitable market to replace those which have been lost to them owing to the collapse of France in Europe.*As M. Paul Vois pointed out the French market which hitherto absorbed more than half their produce is now closed to them and Australia is the obvioua field for new markets.