FRANCE'S COLONIAL EMPIRE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12282, 8 July 1914, Page 5

FRANCE'S COLONIAL EMPIRE.

LINKING IT BY WIRELESS. [By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.] Per Press Association. I'eeeived July 8. .at 9.50 a.m. Sydney, July 8. Judge Heimburger. of the French Colonial Service, en route to New Cale-. doiiia, in an interview is emphatic that France will never sell any -of the possessions in Oceania : oSi the contrary, lie ■says, she is consolidating colonial empire by means of a. costly wireless installation in the French Pacific Islands, as a necessary link in the chain of stations extending from Paris through the colonies. The wireless plant will have an effective range of 5700 miles. He indignantly repudiated the suggestion that the French authorities had countenanced the sale of liquor to natives in the Islands, and said if abuses existed in the JVew Hebrides or elsewhere the Government was pursuing a humane policy, and would surely suppress them. He added that it was no momentary economic consideration at all. The French could not relinquish any portion of the Islands in the Pacific' witiiou.u staining the names of her heroic self-sacrificing navigators of past centuries, and could not stain their memory without staining tlie national honor.