CHRISTMAS ISLAND.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13174, 5 February 1936, Page 2

CHRISTMAS ISLAND.

CLAIMED BY AMERICAN. Imbued with the enthusiasm of the season, Samuel Wilder King, energetic delegate in Congress from Hawaii, to-day “annexed' 7 Christmas island in all but fact, reported the “Christian Science Monitor s '' on Christmas Eve. He thus pushed one step further the . recently-growing American penetration down into the South Seas, with trans-Pacific air bajes as the prime objective. To-day's interestingly named bit of land is the largest and probably the richest coral atoll in the world, located some 1300 miles due south of till* Hawaiian Islands, and the British have always regarded it as their property. Indeed, Delegate King concedes the island is “generally considered British, 5 ’ although he adds, “yet of unsettled status. 5 Haw aiian-Americans have been annexing islands right and left in the last wew months, beginning, oi course, with Jarvis, MowlaiuC and Baker—coral reefs nearly half-way between Hawaii and Australia, and hence of great value as bases for ai aeroplane across the'South Pacific. I hoy were “colonised 5 by the temporary residence of some Hawaiian youths, and officiallv baptised when J Walter Doyle, Collector ol C ustonis in Honolulu, refused to have his baggage examined on returning from them, on the ground that they were American territorv. Hut Delegate King will have Aexceed this quiet imperialism, if lie is to !>ag Christmas. In a four-page statement to the Press (with an obvious eye on the news value of Christmas Island on December 24. and the need oi news editors tor "bright little C hristmas features' ) Delegate King portrays its ehn'rm ni glowing prose-—-there are not only cecoanuts, but automobiles there, wh:t h is rare enough for the South BIG NAMES. I be' island lias two settlements, <ne named London and the other Paris, which is bad for Delegate King’s claim that Christmas is really American, and even Washington Island itself, near to Christmas, he concedes is altogether British. Alter writing as an opening that Christmas "may be tlie next coral atoll of the South Seas to find a place under the American flag,’' Delegate King winds up (a thousand words later), "whether or not the L lilted States will find a way to add C hristmas Island to her atoll aequisii.ons n tlie Pacific remains to be seen. If. then, she could acquire* .running and Washington from the Riritish. extending every cable facility f° the latter, her ownership <>t everything in the mid-Pacific . revolving about Hawaii would be complete !" While these aspirations for Christmas may appear in a lighter vein today. tlie whole* mid-Pacific scramble' tor atolls is altogether serious, and nay ultimately lead to diplomatic* complications. Whether the' Cnited States will be- able to bang on to its growing list o coral atolls—some of them further from Honolulu than Worn New \ ork to Denver—is open to some doubt. But aeroplane wings continue to hum over the Pacificlike the birds whose guano was once tin 1 only attraction on the atolls.