GERMANY IN THE PACIFIC

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1666, 3 February 1904, Page 66

GERMANY IN THE PACIFIC

The current number of “The German Colonial Magazine” (.says a correspondent of ‘The 1 Sydney Daily Telegraph”) contains- a manifesto by the German Governor l of New Guinea which is a flattering tribute to the increasing domination of the language of the Britisher as the medium of 'intercourse through the German colonies in . the Pacific. To His Excellency this is a matter for grief. That a community of Germans should decide to retain M pidginEnglish” for communication with the natives, he considers lamentable, but he regards it as a far more serious calamity that “the English language refuses to* disappear even among the Europeans as the medium of intercourse.” If anywhere there happens to be an English-speaking white present, that is enough, he says, to set a crowd of Germans conversing in more or less bad English. Ho urges that the time has arrived when a drastic change should be made, and the Germans, if in the heart of the Bismarck Archipelago' they have not quite forgotten their fatherland, must be “made conscious of the danger to the German character of the colony entailed !by this penchant for ways.” The Governor concludes hl;s manifesto with an appeal to the German spirit and to the colonists to see that the colony comes by its own again. In commenting upon this document, the organ of the German Colonial So*ciety, which has enlisted the press to second Sts efforts, draws attention to the danger threatened to Germany’s colonies in the Paeifio by the proximity of Australia. In Australia, it is asserted, greedy eyes have fixed upon German New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago. The prevailing opinion in English Circles and in the Australian press, according to “The German Colonial Magazine,” is that the ground is prepared for another annexation; the English language and English ways already predominate, and nothing remains but to hoist the flag. The organ of the G.C.S. ends with the following appeal:—“Away with the ‘pidgm-Erg-liish’ and with the un-German ways in the German colonies! Above all. German, and only German, must be made with the medium of intercourse. . , . The manly appeal of the Governor of New Guinea must be re-echoed by the Government and by the German people. All olasses must be roused to exert themselves, and they must not relax their efforts until the righteous demand, ‘the German language for the German colonies,’ has been . fulfilled.” In spite of this pathetic appeal to their patriotic instincts it is, I fancy, rather more than possible that German colonist® wall prefer to push their commercial interests rather than make any definite effort to spread German culture in the Pacific.