FLYING-BOATS TO CALL

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 39, 15 February 1941, Page 12

FLYING-BOATS TO CALL

PORTUGUESE TIMOR

MEETING EXPANSION BY

JAPAN

(By Trans-Tasman Air Mail—From "The Post's" Representative.)

SYDNEY, January 30.

The inclusion of Dilli, capital of Portuguese Timor, as a port of call for Empire flying-boats- is Australia's first step to counteract increasing Japanese penetration southward. However, there is much leeway to make up, as Japan has, since 1937, subsidised a company to consolidate her trading interests.

On returning' from Dilli, where he made arrangements for calls by the flying-boats, the managing director of Qaritas Empire Airways, Mr., W. Hudson Fysh, urged the .inauguration of trading relations between Australia and the Portuguese settlement. The Portuguese; he said, were favourably disposed to the British, and would welcome the opportunity to trade with Australia. ' *

"Australians," he said, "are entitled to have, misgivings at the extent of Japanese penetration in Dilli, misgivings just as strong as the Japanese would have if we were equally active right at their front door. The Japanese have secured a strong foothold, because they had been consistently buying products from Portuguese Timor for three years, including all of last year's coffee crop. JAPANESE PENETEATION. "For some years the Japanese have been planning steady commercial penetration in the Pacific, and one of the places in which this policy has proved remarkably successful has been in Dilli. Australia, on the other hand, has been j taking little or no interest in similar expansion in a country which lies right at its door. We know very little of this country so close to our shores, and it is time that we began to learn something." The Japanese, Mr. Fysh said, formed a company in 1937, known as the South Seas Development Company, with a capital of 1,000,000 Straits Settlement dollars (£150,000 sterling), and, to stimulate trade with Portuguese Timor, a subsidiary with a capital of 5,000,000 yen (£292,000 sterling) was established. Operations had been proceeding for three years, and the Japanese had acquired interests in other commercial companies in Dilli. The result was that. they, now had a very firm grip.

Mr. Hudson Fysh said. that the Japanese had sought permission for a permanent flying-boat service to Dilli, but the Portuguese had granted permission only for six experimental services from Pellew Islands, in the Japanese mandate. Three trips had already been made. The Portuguese had taken the attitude that there was little apparent reason for the operation of. a Japanese air service, whereas it was logical that the British flying-boat services should call at Dilli, instead of Koepang, on certain trips, which would mean a diversion of only a short distance.