SAMOA’S CAPTURE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20028, 29 August 1939, Page 4

SAMOA’S CAPTURE

GERMAN PACIFIC BASE TO-DAY'S ANNIVERSARY SMALL DOMINION FORCE TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO To-day is the twenty-fifth anniversary of Jhe capture of the former German colony of Samoa by a small force of New Zealand infantry hastily assembled and dispatched within a month of the outbreak of the Great War. Since August 29, 1914, the Samoan group has been under the control of the New Zealand Government, the authority of which was confirmed by a mandate of the League of Nations after the conclusion of peace in 1919. Its history under Dominion control has been a chequered one, and the mandate has not been a source of profit to New Zealand, but the importance of the group as a Pacific base is such that the possibility of its return to Germany is scouted in every official quarter.'

Dramatic Encounter at Apia

The -pre-war centre of German Samoa, Apia, was one of ,the /ports on which the German naval forces in the Pacific, South' Atlantic and the Indian Ocean had counted for supplies of coal and provisions. Its capture by the force from New Zealand was so swiftly accomplished, and the secret so well kept, that not long after the event two German warships, the Scharnhorst and her consort, steamed into Apia harbour’under th e impression that the town was still in German hands.

The surprise felt by the German commander hardly could have been greater than that of the New Zealanders ashore* who were called to defensive stations, and prepared to resist any attempt at recapture of the port. The enemy naval vessels laid thei r guns upon the principal concentrations of troops, but did not fire a shot. Instead, they turned and steamed out into the Pacific to seek other havens. Final Loss Inevitable In the course of a few months, during which the British Navy sought the German ships in all the southern seas, the enemy vessels threatened the communication of the Empire. Badly handicapped as they were by the loss of their ports and coaling stations, they fought a gallant battle against odds, and at the Battle of the Coronel defeated a British squadron under Craddock. They later suffered defeat themselves at the Battle of Falkland Islands, and thus finished an epic of naval history.

To the defeat of the Germans on the high seas, New Zealand contributed through its occupation of German Samoa, and the bloodless victory of Apia played no small part in the development of a strategic situation in which the capture or sinking of the enemy ships was inevitable.