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Hokitika Guardian, 28 January 1918, Page 2

As to the sterling value of the isles of ■ the Pacific to which we have just referred a contemporary remarks: Australians would do well to inquire more diligently into the progress and prospects of these Pacific islands, especially these riiost contiguous to their shores such as Papua and Solomons, and particularly German New- Guinea. These islands are not, as far too many people thing, mere scattered groves of cocoanut, and haunts of naked savages, Rather, are they already, indeed, by keen enterprise and wonderful development, commercial assets of incalculable value. British and Australian enterprise with British and Australian capital, have brought them at this very moment to the point of every profitableness. A famous English statesman during a visit to Australia many years ago uttered these remarkable words: “Australia’s destiny is to bo the trustee of the Pacific.” That utterance to-day should he to all true Australians something'more than remarkable ; it should ho prophetic and even more, it should, he an ambitious incentive for the achievement that, means the winning of this surrounding island world, immediate as well as distant, as partners in a New Pacific Empire, crowned by British re r cognition and protection. Let Australians think and then endeavour to realise what commercial success means in the future of the Pacific; let them think of the millions of fertile acres awaiting development in these islands; and of the hundreds of thousands of acres already prolific with the cultivation of tropical products. Cocoanut, for instance, hi which there are unlimited possibilities, not only as food products for man, .is adding every day to the debt which is clue to it from eivilis ation. This cocoanut which gives the finest quality of margarine useful in so many ways for so many trades), _ gives also one of the most terrible and most successful explosive agencies ] known to the Allies. Crops of rubber, sisal hemp, and tobacco are now superabundant in growth. Cocoa, coffee, nutmegs, cotton, sugar, rice and many other products hut await demand, and there is the cheap labour and the most congenial of soils for their supplies in ample abundance. Oil from Papua ino longer a doubtful proposition, but a commercial fact of significance. Combine all these with the resources, inexhaustible as they are estimated to he, of Australia, and there is assured a future of the happiest, because of the independence of the economic position. Tropical products essential to many of the main industries of the world may he produced Intro in lavish proportions. ' It should need no effort of imagination to realise the importance of this commercial truth. It cannot he possible that Australian men of commerce will lot slip the opportunities of the Pacific, or that Australia’s interests in these islands will be indifferent or naught.

In closing this somewhat lengthy reference to the issues likely t.o he attached to the final disposal of the isles ot the Pacific, we cannot do better than quote the final words of a writer on the subject of who i s quite an fait with tho situation which must in a great measure finally influence the course of events in our own Dominion of Neu Zealand. He says: These islands undoubtedly are making progress, and in leaps and hounds. But they cannot he hampered hv the selfish policies ostrnng ing them already from Australia. Petitions are abroad praying for deliverance from a prospective Australian administration and enumerating Australian faults, and .even flouting Australian friendship. Tho clouds of war not only obscure the vision of the future of the island world of the Pacific as it is mast conjunctive to Australia, hut Australia’s industrial unrest and its gross selfishness mark it out for hatred, discredit and opprobrium, and the great ost, haters of Australia in these islands are Australians. Australians must never lose sight of the ominous facts of the success and ambitions of the Germans in tho Pacific. They have in tho fullest measure henefifted by their sojourn in German New Guinea, a territory of strategical, as well as commercial importance, parfciculary so, owing to its nearness to the empty nun unprotected shores of the North of the Commonwealth. So rich and so well developed is this fine island territory, made up of many groups, that unhesitatingly it may he affirmed that all the millions to which Australia is now committed for the continuance of this war and her share towards maintaining the Empire, will, if the Allies are victorious ho more than recouped. German New Guinea was hut the half-way house, m a. sense, to Australia and it is to-day the greatest regret of the German that in these territories they did not have an army of soldiers to pounce upon Australia at the beginning of the war. This, the Germans in German New Guinea say, would have been quite an easy matter. The grabbing Ger- j manv of pre-war days is and, what is worse, unrepentant in these days. The full significance of this is of grave important to Australians. The future of the Pacific should march with, the future of Australia and with the future of the British Empire for a continuance of which the flower of this noble Empire’s manhood, side by side with the manhood of the nations of the earth that love and honour freedom are now heroically and willingly giving up f.hcir sacred lives. Let us hope the nobleness of the supreme sacrifice will free the world and enable the British Empire to rise more gloriously with Australia as the shin- | ing star, an Empire of an Empire. j