EX-GERMAN COLONIES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 307, 28 December 1914, Page 6

EX-GERMAN COLONIES.

The idea that the German colonies are of little use in themselves (according to a contributor in the "Nineteenth-Century and After") is very frequently heard in this country, but it deprives no support from the considerable German'literature on the subject, nor will it survive examina.tion in detail. Leaving Kiao-Chau, whose value is indisputable, out of account as beyond the scope of British interests, Samoa is one of ; the strategic and commercial centres •of the Pacific; it has long been desired by /the New; Zealand Gdv&lmmetit, whom theSamoail chiefs themselves requested to" annex their country in 1885, and the veto of the Imperial Government on that transaction has for 30 'years been condemned 'in the British Antipodes as a mistake comparable only with the repudiation of the unauthorised British protectorate bicer the Sandwich Isles in 1843. Time and the German Chancellor-have given lis the unmerited opportunity of repairing the first of those blunders; and New, Zealand, which has enthusiastically endorsed the late Premier Seddon's Pacific policy, will be as reluctant to hand back Samoa to Germany as were the New Englanders to restore Louisbourg to France at the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. "«he ha* taken Samoa for a definite reason, and not as a hostage. German New Guinea is .a country as to whose value Australia has nO more doubt than the neighboring'territory of Papua, while it has long been a grievance with Aus,. tralian traders, in the South'Seas that tlio Germans have gradually elbowed thera out of the traffic with New Britain'and the otlier German islands in those waters.