The New Hebrides.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18905, 21 January 1927, Page 10

The New Hebrides.

It can at least be said for the sending of a Commission to the New Hebrides that its report should make extraordinarily interesting reading. The troubles of the Condominium arc partlv economic, partly racial, and partly missionary-religious, and very few people have enough information to enable them to separate one dispute from another. It is doubtful if even Tangier goes further than the Condominium in making a mockery of justice, but even if disputes were heard promptly and conducted simply there would be no lasting peace in the group. Peace requires not merely simple, just, and reasonable lows, but, where races mingle, generous, accommodating, and mutually respecting neighbours, and this there can never be in the New Hebrides under the joint control of I England and France. For the French settlers, almost without exception, despise and laugh at- the English settlers' conception of political and personal morality ; and the English settlers are either missionaries and traders in sympathy (or league) with the missionaries, or men who violently hate the missionaries. In other ■words the French settlers are loosely united and the British sharply disunited, while the traditions of the two races,

instead of 'being modified or merged > under the two flags, are kept alive and j separate. It is really a surprise that j "consideration by the Imperial Con- " ference " was ever carried far enough to lead to a Commission of Enquiry, since any enquiry that is honest -will lead to delicate questions, and tbe Conference had many genuine excuses for leaving the question untouched. Of course nothing will be enquired into but the situation of British settlor?, and that perhaps only on the economic side; but economics and politics in the jungle are more or less one question, with morals and religion never far away, and it is some relief in such a case that the Commissioners seem >o .able and discreel. i