NEW HEBRIDES RULE

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 301, 12 March 1928, Page 12

NEW HEBRIDES RULE

END OF CONDOMINIUM? BRITISH PLANTERS SELLING

The end of the condominium in the New Hebrides was predicted by the Right Rev. F. M. Molyneux, assistant Bishop of Melanesia, this morning. “T THINK the Condominium is ending,” he said, “and the British are going out, although nothing has been said about it officially. The British planters have sold to the French.” Bishop Molyneux returned by the Niagara this morning after an extensive tour of the large diocese of Melanesia. During that time he visited the New Hebrides, where he says there are endless cases of hardship. The diocese of Melanesia is enclosed in a circumference of about 9,000 or 10,000 miles and contains some thousands of islands. It was impossible for Bishop Molyneux to visit them all. He spt nt most of his time in the New Hebrides and Banks Islands and also visited the Solomons.

Many of his smaller journeys were made in whaleboats, the longer ones in the Southern Cross.

The ownership of the New Hebrides, a group of about 30 inhabited islands, has for many years been a vexed question. There is dual control by England and France. To-day the French outnumber the British by more than two to one. A joint commission was appointed in 1887. This was followed by an Arbitration Court in 1895, on which a British and a French Judge each sat. The present Condominium Government was established in 1907.