SOUTH SEAS SCENE

Cue (NZERS), Issue 31, 15 September 1945, Page 24

SOUTH SEAS SCENE

IT AD the worst come to the worst, 11 the first flood of Japanese immigrants might by now have been surging across the archipelagos of the Pacific, enveloping every inhabitable island in the South Seas and overflowing even on to the shores of Australia and Yew Zealand. At this stage, ivith the fangs drawn from both Germany and Japan and the ’’Yellow Peril” a nightmare of the past, the drawing of such a dark picture probably represents the peak of useless surmise and conjecture. Yet and it is important that this should be borne in mind —it also represents one of Japan's key aspirations not only at the time of Pearl Harbour, but for decades before.

Remember Versailles? Japan even then had her eye on the rich prizes of the Pacific as a solution of her surplus population troubles, as witness her request to the Allied Powers that formal recognition of the principle of racial and national equality should be incorporated in the Covenant of the League of Nations. Fortunately, the manoeuvre was as transparent as it was naive, and both New Zealand and Australia demanded that from any formula to be adopted there should be explicit exemption of the right of immigration. Japan thereupon dropped the whole idea. What she failed to gain at Versailles by diplomatic tactics she attempted to acquire by force in 1941 and 1942. The net result of her second failure has been the loss of all her conquered and annexed territories .and her island bases in the Pacific, including the Marshall, Caro-

line, Pelew and Ladrone Islands, which she acquired under mandate when they were taken from Germany under the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.

Japan thus drops out of the Pacific picture, just as Germany was ejected at the end of the 1914-18 war. That in turn brings a prospect of an early reshuffle of areas of influence among the Pacific islands which, with their total land area of 391,000 square miles, fell until 1941 into eighteen separate jurisdictions under the sovereignty of eight nationsthe United States, Great Britain, France, Holland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Chile. Subject to the meeting of requirements in the way of strategic bases, there is now an excellent opportunity for refashioning the previously patchwork pattern of control in the South Seas to bring about a workable system that will not only best serve the interests of the island inhabitants, but will also enable the important functions of administration and defence to be discharged without the confusions or uneconomical overlapping of the past.

The time has come to frame a policy for the Pacific, to hammer out a scheme of things in which there will be no place for international friction or individual aggrandisement and in which the division of interests must he adapted to meet the needs of the administered rather than the administrators. New Zealand is already a shareholder in the Pacific stake on y a small shareholder, certainly, hut er degree of relationship with the is an

groups -of the South-West Pacific renders it inevitable that she must be prepared to shoulder even greater responsibilities in the future.

Administration, of course, involves many side issues, including the important one of defence, in which the use, not only of sea and air units, hut also of land forces, acting in a garrison role, may quite conceivably be necessary.

Naval power has always been the foundation of New Zealand defence policy in the past. New Zealand agreed in 1887 to- pay 1220,000 a year towards the cost of the British Navy, and this amount was doubled in 1903, while five years later it was raised to LIOO,OOO. In 1909 the Dominion presented the cruiser 11.M.5. New Zealand to Britain. After the last war the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy was formed, with New Zealand controlling it in peace-time and Britain in war-time. In recognition of the services of the Dominion’s naval forces in this war H.M. the King approved the proposal to designate them ’’The Royal New Zealand Navy”.

The New Zealand naval station before the war was responsible for an area which included not only Fiji and the Cook, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, but also Fanning and’ Christmas Islands, lying north of the equator. A Pacific defence conference was held in New Zealand in 1939, at which New Zealand assumed responsibility for the garrisoning of Fanning Island, the establishment of flying-boat and land air bases at Fjji, and air reconnaissance between Tonga and the New Hebrides, and also agreed to assist in the defence of Tonga. Following Japan’s southward swoop the reorganisation of Pacific commands found New Zealand incorporated in the South Pacific area along with a chain of islands south of the equator extending from the Solomons to the east, namely, the Solomons, the New Hebrides, New

Caledonia, the Ellice Islands, Fiji, Samoa, the Cook Islands and French Oceania.

If such a grouping should have been found practicable and necessary in time of war, it seems reasonable to expect that with the coming of peace an equally workable arrangement can be found to meet administration requirements. No return can be entertained to the pre-war system which gave rise to such cumbersome divisions of administration as existed in the case of the Solomons, the northern half of which was controlled under mandate by Australia and the southern half by Britain, with a Resident Commissioner on the spot. Nor can there continue to be acceptance of such unwieldy methods as the Anglo-French condominium in the New Hebrides, while hardly more suitable is an arrangement such as that existing in Samoa, the western area of which is under New Zealand administration and- the eastern area under the American flag.

Nothing could have stressed more clearly the strategic importance of the Pacific islands than the war just ended. Japan’s expansionist policies, the break-down of naval and non-fortifi-cation agreements following Japan’s flouting of the decisions of the Washington Conference of 1921-22, the development of transpacific aviation, and the rallying of the democracies in the face of totalitarianism have all been factors emphasising their value in exercising control over the Pacific communication lanes. It is therefore apparent that in the Pacific the intelligent post-war planning of human affairs is going to receive a chance of proving its worth.

One suggestion likely to receive consideration as a possible solution to the Pacific set-up is that the mandatory system should be brought to an end by transferring full sovereignty to the mandatory nations. Not only would this step place direct administrative

responsibility on the nation concerned in each case, but it would link the economic development of the colonies to some definite national or imperial system instead of leaving them dependent on uncertain world markets, and would provide a clear basis for native political loyalties. Another proposal is that the scattered island jurisdictions which each nation now holds should be integrated in the interests of better administration. Under such a scheme all the South Seas territories of Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand

could be controlled by a joint commission. It would be necessary in the meantime to maintain local administrative entities now in existence, particularly in such politically conscious places as Tonga and Fiji, but the way could be paved for the removing in time of some of the boundaries of today.

There are several methods of organisation under which the development of international collaboration could be applied to the needs of the Pacific. One proposal that has been advanced is that the nations at present .exercising influence in the Pacific should establish a South 'Seas Federation, drawing in as many territories as possible and placing the whole under the control of a joint commission appointed by the Powers concerned. Supporters of the general principle of international supervision contend that the

weaknesses of the mandate system, such as the difficulty of defining the spheres of responsibility as between local administrations, the mandatory governments, and the international body, could be ironed out so as to make the native populations wards of civilisation rather than leaving them under the narrower influence of only one political group. In either system—integration of each nation’s interests in the Pacific or the substitution of a type of international control—the immediate advantage would lie in the pooling of resources, financial and economic, for the benefit cf all parties.

The disadvantages of having the island groups of the Pacific under several different administrations without any common plan of action in such matters as defence hardly require emphasis. However, it is a consideration to which due weight must bo given in formulating the peace settlement, and, in view of New Zealand’s close relationship with the island groups of the South Seas and her geographical situation, she has strong claims as an administrative centre. In the event of her accepting the administration of further islands there is every likelihood of an additional charge being made on the New Zealand taxpayer, but that would be merely the price of ensuring stability in the South-West Pacific and as such would return worthwhile dividends. Any such outlay would compare favourably as an investment with the Dominion contribution of a million pounds towards the cost of the Singapore Base, the final payment on which amount was made as recently as 1937 a

About a dozen Pacific Islands, rang ing in size from-small atolls to the mandated territory of Western Samoa (which is roughly the size .of Stewart Island), come within New Zealan present administrative sphere, as we as the 175,000 square miles area ot tn Ross Dependency, in the Antarctic, control of which boils down e

apportioning of whaling, rights. From the earliest days New . Zealand was a natural centre for trade and missionary endeavour in the islands to the north, and it was largely due to- this reason that the Colonial Office saw fit from time to time to transfer islands formerly administered from London to the care of the New Zealand* Government. The same geographical factors pertain now as then, but their significance has been greatly magnified by the developments of the past decade.

New Zealand’s voice has been heard at the Pacific Defence Conference and on the Pacific War Council, and it will

be heard again at the peace conference which lays down the post-war formula for the Pacific. Should she, a small country with internal problems of her own, agree to assume greater responsibilities of island administration which must inevitably increase her economic burden, or should she retire behind a screen of semi-isolation and leave the task to others?

The question is a vital one. No matter how long the war in the Pacific lasted there had to come a time when it must be faced and decided. That time has arrived.