N. Z. AND THE PACIFIC ISLANDS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXII, Issue LXII, 18 November 1911, Page 3

N. Z. AND THE PACIFIC ISLANDS.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Mr Humphrey Berkeley, a leading resident of Suva, who took a prominent part in the movement some years ago ior the annexation by New Zealand of Fiji and Tonga, has changed his views. Formerly he was of opinion that it would be well for those groups to be attached to the Dominion, rather than to Australia, on account of the absence of conflicting interests, New Zealand having no tropical produce of her own to, enter into competition with those grown hy colored labor in the islands. He now considers that the present system of government in Fiji is well suited to the requirements of that colony, and that unless Fiji joined the Commonwealth or New Zealand under a definite agreement, by which colored labor would not be interfered with, or the products penalised, it would be absurd for the colony to change its status. Fiji, he says, is now prospering, the policy of the last three administrations has been a sound and progressive one. As for Tonga, it is the last native kingdom in the Pacific, and it would be a pity if it lost its independence, and became an appendage of New Zealand. Mr Berkeley, who is a keen student of ethnology, has an interesting theory of his own, which he proposes presently to publish^ as to the origin of the Polynesian race. It is, in brief, that the migratio ntook place from Mexico.