PACIFIC ISLANDS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume V, Issue 1358, 20 June 1918, Page 5

PACIFIC ISLANDS.

GERMAN COLONIES. (A. & X.Z.) LONDON', June 18. The German Government has officially recognised Herr Ernest Kienetz's book on the value of the German South Sea Islands, which replies to suggestions that these could be advantageously bartered for more substantial possessions elsewhere. Herr Kienetz is the spokesman for the Nationalists, who are rallying to maintain the integrity of the German possessions in Australasia and the South Seas. His book is full of elaborate statistics to prove the money value of the islands and their produce. He values them at £70,000,000 sterling, exclusive of German New Guinea, where the phosphates alone are worth £303,000,000 sterling. He considers that these possessions are worth* double all Germany's other colonies, and proceeds to say:—"The real value of our South Sea Australasian possessions is to be found in other regions than economic ones. We must hold them for world prestige, without which we cannot have a world or a colonial policy. We dare not disappear from [he earth's greatest ocean, if only because of China's, Australia's, and the Anglo-Saxon and Japanese antagonism. This antagonism must be exploited to the utmost; let us therefore retain our South Sea possessions and try to increase them."