FIJI'S BRITISH JUBILEE.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18362, 21 April 1925, Page 6

FIJI'S BRITISH JUBILEE.

FIFTY YEARS OF CHANGING FORTUNE. "Half the world aw.f', one of the communities which make up the British Empire has celebrated its jubilee," says the "Daily Telegraph." "The islands of Fiji (there are 288) are precisely our antipodes, for the parallel of longitude of 180 deg., on which the reckonings east and west of Greenwich meet and become the same, passes through the middle of the archipelago. "Though it was not till 1874 that the British ensign flew over Levuka, white men had seen tho islands centuries bofore. The manner of their incorpora-: tion in our Empiro is one of those' satiric commentaries on the theory that wo are a nation of greedy Im-. perialists, of which our'history contains many.

"Tho first European who over saw the surf on the coral shores of the little outer inlands was Abel Tasman, who came that way about, the timo Charles I. and Cromwell were fighting here. Captain Cook found Turtle Island in 1773. Bligh, of the Bounty, after his crew had turned him adrift in his launch, came down to Fiji and had trouble with the natives.

"But by 1840 missionaries were at work in Fiji. A chief of somo governing power emerged, King Thakomban, who turned Christian, and in 1859 offered his realm to Great Britain. A gunner colonel was sent out to look into the matter, advised against annexation, but recommended that the British Consul should be given full powers over his own countrymen in tho islands. Whitehall would not go even so far as that. Settlers came in by hundreds, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes, for there was neither civil nor criminal law. Again the sovereignty was offered to Britain, again refused. "The Islanders turned to the United States, but Washington was as afraid of responsibility as Whitehall. King Thakomban tried his hand at constitutional government with an amateur English Ministry. It did not work, and iu 187-y reluctant Britain had to hoist her flag at last. There were some dark years. Tea would not do, coffee went wrong, sugar did not pay. But nowadays Fiji is prosperous with sugar and copra, bananas and rubber, and likely to do still better service to a world which needs year by year more of the produce of the tropics.