THE GERMAN COLONIES.

Colonist, Volume LX, Issue 14620, 26 January 1918, Page 5

THE GERMAN COLONIES.

AUSTRALIA'S INTERESTS.

SPEECH BY SIR W. P. CULLEN,

Sydney, Jan. 25. The destiny of the captured German colonies is occupying attention. I The. Lieutenant-Governor, Sir W. P. Cullen, in a speech referring to the danger of the future of New Guinea being judged in the light of insufficient knowledge, said one circumstance to which sufficient attention was I never drawn was that Australia was (the one country in the world threatened with the curse of a land frontier with suck a nation as Germany. Under circumstances that might have been avoided, New Guinea , had been left jwitt! divided authority. Quite apart {from the dangers arising from sub- . marine posfs on the coast of New Guinea, there was this eternal rankling" sore in front of us of a land that could | ;at any moment bo used in a quarrel! (about mines, oilfiekLs', or anything else. The idea of self-determination in such a ease, where the occupants, like the Germans, were using every moment to 1 secure their own prestige with the people, was one that no Australian could | contemplate ■, with equanimity for a ■ single moment.