SPITZBERGEN

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 181, 20 April 1918, Page 10

SPITZBERGEN

A UNIQUE INTERNATIONAL CASE

ASPIRATIONS OP AN ARCTIC

COMMUNITY

In all the statements of peace terms thus far propounded (says the NeV \ork "livening Post") no mention has been made, no solution offered, of a unique international problem, very properly remarks Secretary of State Lansing in the last issue of the "American Journal of International Law. 1, Every corner of the globe is to-day being settled, once and lor all, by leading statesmen of the belligerent I'owers. There is no fragment of humanity or territory so small that it lias not :e----ceived attention from the world's Colonel Houses. Irish-Irish, UlsterIrish, Irish-U 1 ster-Irish, Slovenes, Slovaks, ltutheniaiis, Little Russians, Ugro-Turanians, Letts, Finns, Georgjans, Tartars, Bengalese, Senegambians, Ugandese, Congolese, Astrakhans, Arabs, Armenians, Persians, Poles, all these and a thousand nioro are receiving the dignified attention of elder statesmen everywhere. The congeries of races now suffering under an inability io learn the spurned Magyar tongue is being assigned its right to self-determination by the B.ussian Bolsheviki. People in remote Transylvanian villages, living on the same street together, who now won't spenk to each other for excellent inherited race reasons of their own are to be reconciled by a just division of urban Lhorqughfares.

Yet there is a territory some fifty thousand square miles in area, favourably situated, for at least two months of the summer, on open water, rich in coal and other undiscovered natural resources, thinly populated, though with a population remarkably shrewd and wary, a territory which is yearning to be claimed by somebody, but which, owing to thd utter selfishness of the colonising nations, lias not yet enjoyed the advantages of European protection. That territory consists of the islands of Spitsbergen, which now raise their voices through the medium, of tho American Secretary of State, nnd demand to be considered at the impending Peace Conference.

.Spitzbergen is a foundling asking asylum. Discovered several hundred yoars ago.by some. Swede or other, it lias been leading a reckless, vagrant existence ever since. More than a decade ago important coal deposits were discovered in the islands and an American concern began mining operations. Immediately diplomacy woke up, rubbed its eyes; far-sighted nations, which were informed by their patroitio scientists that their own coal deposits would inevitably be exhausted in » given number of centuries if- the current rate of consumption wero kept up and neither feasible sun nor tide •motors invented, commenced to question. the American company's title. A very nice point then aroso. Here was a vast terrain which had never been claimed by anybody, floating around loose, as it were. The usual courso of events when a submarine eruption throws up out of tlie sea a littlo fool's-cap of a Pacific island is for half a dozen cruisers and battleships of half a dozen different countries to make a race of it to tlio newly-emerged shores, for the purpose of first running up their respective flags. The. Pacific, before the war, used to be dotted with warships that had no other "occupation than ' this. Spitsbergen, therefore, presented a umquo problem on its economic emergence. Spitsbergen was correspondingly proud. It had high Lopes of figiiring in a famous international incident.

And then what happened? The European war burst and ended all this Arctic Eldorado's hopes. Had tlio bottom dropped out of the polar seas these hopes could not have been more effectually it'rost-uipped. Secretary Lansing, therefore, does no more than what is just when he lifts these territories again into the high-lights of the aurora borealis. The proposal is to pool (during the thawing season) insular Spitzbergen, to mako it the ward of all the Powers. Gradually, no doubt, as in Africa, the inhabitants will be called upon to toxpress their (preferences, whether they wish to become French, English, Germans,'or Russians. Most of the Spitzbergen people aro still in tlio nomad state. They live in a primitive way, eating lichens that grow on the southern exposure of 'the rocky coastland, and upon fish which they dip up out of the sen. It is doubtful whether they have the requisite plebiscite intelligence or desire. For a long time they will show practically no interest in European civilisation. So that, first and foremost, will come the matter of settling the question of tlio ownership of the coal deposits. Naturally, such a-material consideration as this has not usually been the motive which has actuated the colonising efforts of Europo; there has always been the higher motive of doing something for the backward races. But, as already stated, the Spitzbergers will probably for a long time to come evade all cultural advances. The coal must be mined internationally. The small surplus that is not used to keep the miners warm will be exported, in the two open months, to Europo, .Asia, Africa, and the Americas by ships carrying the Spitzbergen flag, a po'ar bear rampant upon an ice-floe errant.