FUTURE OF SAMOA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1760, 4 December 1917, Page 1

FUTURE OF SAMOA.

NO GERMANS NEED APPLY. FIRM ATTITUDE OF THE PRIME MINISTER. The Prime Minister made the attitude of the New Zealand Government in regard to the future of Samoa abundantly clear in a speech to the delegates at the annual conference of the Chambers of Commerce in Wellington. Referring to a remit —that the New Zealand Government be asked to stipulate when peace negotiations are in progress, that as a basis of future security in the Pacific, German Samoa be retained as a British possession, and in view of the future development the Government be further requested to cultivate commercial relationship between the island and the Dominion —Mr Massey said: “I would like to tell you that a good deal has been done by Sir Joseph Ward and myself in impressing on the gentlemen at the head of affairs in Great Britain the opinion of the people of Australia and'New Zealand regarding the islands formerly occupied by Germany. We lost no opportunity of urging that any proposals to give back any of the islands in which we are concerned would be bitterly resented by the citizens of the British nation in the South Pacific. I think we were pretty successful in impressing our point of view. We will see the result later on. Another opportunity of pressing the subject probably will offer. There are the possibilities of the peace conference. The line we take is that we are not thinking of the value of the islands so much, although Now Guinea will be of great value in time to come; This is the point. If these islands are given back io Germany it will mean that Samoa will be the headquarters of a German fleet in the Pacific, as it was before the establishment of a great wireless station which will be able to speak to countries all over the Pacific. It will possibly mean the establishment of a fleet of submarines. The Germans in the Pacific have not proved particularly good neighbours in the past, and we do not want them here again. And the British Government have been told that we are not going to have them if we possibly can help it.”