COLONIES AND PRESTIGE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22352, 25 February 1936, Page 8

COLONIES AND PRESTIGE

From Portugal comes an interesting word about colonies. There the Prime Minister has specially summoned Parliament in order to announce that Portugal cannot consider surrender of her colonies. He has added the naive statement that the matter is more a question of prestige than of economics. In this he has spoken, possibly unaware, for more countries than his own. Signor Mussolini, to judge him by his public utterances, is bent on colonial expansion primarily as a means of making Italy a great name in the earth. This, at all events, is the burden of his strenuous appeals to Italian patriotism. His complaint that Italy's claim to a 'share of the enemy possessions surrendered at the close of the Great War was neglected has been couched in the same fashion. It is very doubtful whether, short of entirely dispossessing the Abyssinians, any considerable portion of their territory can be of much economic value to Italy. So with the German demand. Germany wants colonies, but does not need them—except as a token of restored national prestige. Hitler has been as frank as Mussolini about this. He well knows that Germany's resources are at present quite inadequate for colonial enterprises, and that population statistics and the figures of German trade cannot be effectively quoted to support any alleged economic necessity for territorial expansion overseas. History records the pronounced aversion of Bismarck to the acquisition of colonies —he described himself emphatically as "a no-colony man" —and he was induced to give a grudged consent to a colonial movement for no other reason than its adding to national ■status in the world. Germany at present is asking and working for the return of South West Africa, for which the Union of South Africa holds the mandate, and yet half of this tract is desert and the rest not an economic proposition for a European Power. In the candid statement of Portugal's Prime Minister is an admission to be noted whenever the question of colonies is internationally raised.