SLAVERY UNDER BRITISH FLAG.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1163, 25 October 1913, Page 4

SLAVERY UNDER BRITISH FLAG.

Writing in the Review of Reviews for October on the situation in the New Hebrides, Mr Stead says : —Six years’ experience has conclusively proved that the present arrangement cannot continue. So far as the judicial treatment of the natives is concerned, French and Knglish law mix together about as well as oil and water. The difference is basic and fundamental. This being so, dual

control of a native population becomes hopeless. The only solution is that Great Britain or France shall have sole control, and for the sake of the natives it is to be hoped it will not be the latter. French settlers appear to break the laws made to protect the natives with impunity. They sell drink —which is prohibited—to such an extent that untold mischief is being wrought amongst the natives. They and their agents kidnap not only men, but women and children, trick the natives into signing on as labourers for long terms, and while many cases of fearful cruelty have been brought to light, they have gone unpunished. What comes out in the neighbourhood of towns gives some idea of the ghastly conditions in distant plantations. In many of these a stale of practical slavery exists. Slavery under the British flag 1 The death rate on the French plantations has been kept a secret by the French administration, and it is only when these come into English hands that the appalling conditions obtaining there are made known.