FRENCH PACIFIC ISLANDS

Otago Witness, Issue 3148, 15 July 1914, Page 25

FRENCH PACIFIC ISLANDS

SYDNEY, July 8. Judge Heimburger, of the French colonial service, who is en route for New Caledonia, has been interviewed. He is emphatic on the point that France will never sell any of her possessions in the Pacific. On the contrary, she is consolidating her colonial empire by means of a costly wireless installation, and the French Pacific Islands constitute a necessary link in the chain of stations, which will extend from Paris through the French colonies. This wireless plant will have an effective range of 5700. miles. Judge Heimburger indignantly repudiates the suggestion that the French authorities countenanced the sale of liquor to the natives of the islands. If abuses existed, in the New Hebrides or elsewhere, the Government, which was pursuing a humane policy, would surely suppress them. He added : “ It is not a monetary or an economic consideration at all, France could not relinquish any portion of her islands in the Pacific without staining the names of her heroic and self-sacrificing navigators of past centuries, and she could not stain their memory without staining her own national honour.”