THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, JUNE 14, 1918. THE PACIFIC COLONIES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17341, 14 June 1918, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES FRIDAY, JUNE 14, 1918. THE PACIFIC COLONIES.

Sm Rodent Stout, writing in Tho limes, denies that Germany ever possessed any colonies in tho Pacific. " She seized some islands," ho says, " contrary to the wishes , of their inhabitants, and she has governed them as autocrats govern; but sho has had no colonies." It is to bo feared that this declaration involves a verbal refinement which will not weigh very heavily at tho conference that will determine the future of those islands. Tlio essential fact is that Germany held the islands prior to tho war, and that sho hopes to recover them, along with tho territories she formerly possessed in Africa. Her aim® havo been quite frankly expressed by Dr Solf, her Minister of tho Colonies, who has laid emphasis on the re-acquisition of the Pacific colonies as necessary to Germany. It would ho absurd to suppose that these colonics are so valuable to tlio Germans for the sake of their trade that their statesmen should base upon this ground a special claim for the restoration of them. Nor have the islands any great value for colonising purposes. The climate unfits them for extensive European settlement. As Sir Robert Stout says, " tho number of Germans settled in .the whole of the Pacific islands is negligible." The strategic importance of the islands is, however, very considerable to a nation which is obsessed with dreams of worldconquest. Most people entertain the hopo that tho cruel sacrifices which have been Entailed in tho present greatest of all wars will awaken among the civilised peoples of tho globe a sense of the imperative need for the avoidance of war in future. The Kaiser himself has sanctimoniously rendered lip-service to tho ideal of a league of nations for the prevention of armed conflict. The hypocrisy of his pious professions has been revealed, however, in the terms of the fresh agreement which Germany has imposed upon her vassal Austria. That agreement affords the most conclusive evidence that the Central Powers are already making their plans for another war. It begins with the affirmation that the two Powers shall form a close military alliance for 25 years, for which period they pledge themselves to employ the entire strength of their respective peoples for military purposes, and to devote all their ■care to have their armies fully prepared to enter the eventful future conflict at their maximum strength. The subsidiary clauses of the agreement are directed to the organisation of plans by which the greatest possible effect shall be given to the principle of the military alliance. When the aims of Germany are thus nakedly exposed—for Austria is a mere tool in the hands of Germany —it is impossible to disguise the terrible menace which the restoration of New Guinea and German Samoa to their prewar owners would present to the British dominions in these southern seas. It is, therefore, in no spirit of blatant Imperialism, as the Bolshevists in our midst would have us believe, that Mr Massey, Mr Hughes, and other colonial statesmen are urging that under no consideration should the captured Pacific islands be handed back to Germany. Tho question of tho future of these islands is one of tremendous moment in Australia and New Zealand. Tho aims of. Germany being what they are, we are forced to the conviction that, in the event of the control over New Guinea and Samoa being recovered by her, she would establish bases on them from which hor submarine cruisers and airfleets could strike at Australia and New Zealand. The short-sighted people who have expressed their favour for the formula of " 110 annexations and no indemnities," which Germany promptly dropped when it became possible for her to crush Russia and Rumania under her heel, have never fully considered what the acceptance of it would really mean. They imagine that adhesion to this formula is a corollary of the opposition which they entertain to militarism. If they will only give a little reflection to the matter, they must see that the application of the formula in the case of the Pacific colonies would impose upon Australia and upon New Zealand the need in self-defence for the maintenance of a large military organisation. It would fasten upon these dominions precisely the conditions which the public generally wishes to avoid. This country desires and requires a long period of peaceful development after the war in order that she may successfully carry the burdens that are being thrown upon her. But the opportunity of this development will bo denied to her, and to Australia in common with her, if such objectionable people as the Germans are to become her neighbours once more. It would, moreover, be idle to protend that, after all that has occurred during "the war, tho room of the Germans will not be much nioro preferable to their company than it ever was before.