THE PACIFIC.

Northern Advocate, 24 July 1923, Page 7

THE PACIFIC.

AUSTRALIAN RESPONSIBILITIES.

A VITAL TASK.

The significance of the Pacific in its influence upon the whole of the world, and in its relation especially to Australia, was emphasised by Mr C. Brunsdon Fletcher in an address before a large gathering at the Millions Club, Sydney, of which he was the guest.

Sir Arthur Rickard, i n introducing Mr Brunsdon Fletcher, spoke of him as a recognised authority 011 the Pacific.

Mr Brunsdon Fletcher, in emphasising at the outset the vastness of the Pacific, said that ocean had more to do with the well-being of the whole of the world than most people realised. They could not have a great bey of water like that in half the world without the lost of the world being very much influenced by it. It wus literally one half of the world. With the aid of informative maps, the speaker brought home more readily Australia's responsibilities in the Pacific, and he emphasised the importance of Australians studying more closely the literature which so closely concerned them. Japan had come down to the Marshall Islands, and now possessed a base which brought her 2000 miles nearer to Australia than before the war. Japan, in short, instead of being 4000 miles away, was now- within 2000 miles fighting distance of Australia.

The speaker dealt in an interesting way with >:omc of the smaller islands and the romance that clung about them, notably Palmerston Island, which, he said, was believed to be the island upon which the first Briton ever put his foot on land in the Pacific. In 1521 Magellan had landed with his polyglot crew on his voyage to circumnavigate the globe, but the island was uninhabited in 1862, when William Masters put ashore there with three native women as w"ives, and started to | raise a family—three families, as a matter of fact. (Laughter.) Some ! years after that a New Zealand official visiting the island found a population there of 130. (Laughter.) Masters had built a little church out of wreckage, and had brought up his children, his grandchildren, and his great-grand-children to talk English and live like Christians. Palmerston Island illustrated the point that the history of such islands could be taken as typical of the history of the Pacific, in which white men figured as influencing the natives for good and ill. It was a story of flotsam and jetsam, of men escaped from whalers, of escaped convicts and beachcombers, and of missionaries, planters, and traders. The intermarriage of white men with Polynesians, he went on to say, had been fruitful of a fine, sturdy stock, as in New Zealand, which showed that the Polynesian stock was very much akin to our own. But there were other native races, like the Melanesian, which intermingled with the Polynesian in Fiji.

The Pacific was not divisible. Run-

ning everywhere were great ocean highways. It was everyone's property. There were spheres of influence, no doubt,, but who could say that these lines were borders or barriers? Who could decide that Japan should not come south, or that we should not go north? The whole of tho Pacific was open to the world, and was going to become, if it had not already become, one of the pivots in the world's history, because of the influence of the sun in its various altitudes, and because of its potential wealth, a wealth beyond our wildest dreams, awaiting development there. The speaker went 011 to relate briefly the history of some of the smaller islands—Nauru, for example, and Ocean Island, which was remarkable for its droughts, and where acres of land on one occasion had been exchanged for one cocoanut shell of water. Both these islands to-day, thanks to their phosphate rock and the expenditure of much capital, possessed all the amenities of life which characterised Sydney. Nauru now had everything to make life pleasant. It had become prominent through the phosphate industry and the League of Nations. in connection w-ith the question of the treatment of the natives.

Mr Brunsdon Fletcher, in elaborating this reference to the Pacific and our trusteeship there, said our view of orr responsibility to the natives in the ishinds wias different from the German view. The natives came first in our view. That, indeed, had largely been the case all through, and the Mandates Commission was satisfied that, we had not been unmindful of our trust in this regard.

Mr Brunsdon Fletcher, in emphasising Australia's responsibilities in the Pacific, said it was very easy, in dealing with our mandates there, to forget sometimes that we were tackling a job for which we were never prepared. He ventured to say, indeed, that in Australia to-day we did not realise properly what we had undertaken. We hed a hiph protective tariff, for example, which was used like an axe upon the nascent industries of Papua and the other islands. Australia, however, was beginning to realise that she nrepare herself for great, responsibilities in the Pacific, by training staffs to deal with the natives. The speaker, in conclusion, urged Australians tn take a Tiiore livelv and deeper interest in the Pacific, because of the bearing which it had upon our own and welfare, a 1!'! to .inform them-.-<>Ves of. the position more closely by .•■t"dy:n«; the maps and rend':".-; the literature.

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