MANDATE OVER NEW GUINEA

Southland Times, Issue 23647, 24 October 1938, Page 2

MANDATE OVER NEW GUINEA

MR HUGHES ADVISES AUSTRALIA DEVELOPMENT IN RECENT YEARS SYDNEY, October 13. Like South Africa and Kenya, Australia will be vitally affected by any proposal for'the return to Germany of her former colonies. South Africa and Kenya have expressed in advance their opposition to any such proposal. In Australia the Federal Government has so far remained silent on the subject, but it has now been brought into the open by the stormy petrel of the Cabinet, the Minister of External Affairs, Mr W. M. Hughes. , Mr Hughes has been in trouble with his ministerial colleagues on three occasions, because of speeches which they would rather he had never made, and his latest effort is not likely to improve his relations with them. Mr Hughes was approached by The Daily Telegraph for a statement on the colony problem, following cables reporting serious concern in South Africa, and he willingly obliged. “Australia,” he said, “holds New Guinea in trust for the benefit of its primitive peoples. ..lie tenure of our mandate was not set out, but by its very nature it will have to continue until the primitive people can manage their own country. It will also have to continue until they are in a position to prevent aggression, and that will take many generations.” Mr Hughes added that while Germany had done little or nothing for the territory, Australia had spent laige sums developing it, and was now contemplating spending a lot more in establishing a new capital city. A Tasmanian resolution to be discussed at the Returned Soldiers’ Congress in Perth next month opposes the return of New Guinea to Germany without a referendum in Australia. This was supported by Mr Hughes. “The attitude of returned soldiers deserves to be considered,” he said. “Australian soldiers gave their lives for the country. Many of the settlers in New Guinea are returned soldiers and many more returned men have invested their money there.” When a suggestion that if Germany secured New Guinea she would form a front line defence against any invasion of Australia from the East was referred to Mr Hughes, he replied: “The answer to that is in a fable by La Fontaine.” “Do you mean the people who heard a lion in the woods and engaged a tiger to defend them?” Mr Hughes was asked. “I shall not. say,” he replied cautiously. “I’ll leave it to you to consider if tL a l one fits.” THANKSGIVING SUNDAY Meantime, at the suggestion of the Prime Minister, Mr Lyons, churchgoing people observed last Sunday as a day of thanksgiving for the peace of Munich. The director of the New South Wales Methodist Young People’s Department, the Rev. J. H. Sorrell; however, publicly dissociated himself from the thanksgiving on the ground that men were crying peace when there was not peace, and that if there were a pretence of peace, it was peace with dishonour. Explaining his attitude, Mr Sorrell made a remarkably frank statement. He said: “Thanks for such a peace, to my mind, is an insult to God. I cannot conceive of Munich and the subsequent work of the International Commission —with its amazing and atrocious decisions—being the handiwork of God. Not by the wildest stretch of imag:nation can I picture Jesus Christ throwing some helpless individual to the wolves so that He might make His escape. If I could think of myself looking on earth for Christ today, the first place I would look would be among the million homeless and despairing Czechs. “I doubt if in history there has ever been an act of greater national turpitude than the betrayal of Czechslovakia. In the world today there are two nations with souls badly scarred and compromised—Britain and France. We feel that the old flag, so long the symbol of honour and protection for the weak, has lost its glory and that the ideals of a lifetime have been shattered.”