One-Man War

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 780, 28 September 1929, Page 20

One-Man War

| QUAINT DISPUTE OVER : TINY ISLAND IN THE I BRITISH CHANNEL ' WHO OWNS THE EMPIRE? Britannia stm rules the waves—and the rocks But the little island which M. Leroux, the French banker, claimed to be French soil, and on which he started to build a house, promised recently to be the scene of a pitched battle.

Particulars, additional to those already published, have been obtained by the reconnaisance officers of the garrison of the islands. M. Leroux threatened to make a lightning raid on Minquiers. He chose his time well, since the 12 stalwart fiishermen whose Union Jack flies so bravely in the breeze are forced to abandon their island fortress for the week-end in order to sell the lobsters they havfi been catching during the week. If M. Leroux arrived in a gunboat or the amateur vessel he uses while the fishermen were on the island he would, judging by their present attitude, be greeted with a rapid fire of freshlyboiled lobsters, and would probably have to retire in confusion.

Mr. Renouf, the Jersey solicitor, whose position on Minquiers is proportionately equivalent to that of Mr. Hoover in the United States, was recently reported to be considering the possibility of mounting machine-guns at vantage points on the island and calling in the Jersey Militia to defend Britain’s rights. The only argument against a war on the island is that there is not enough room. There is barely space for two men to have a really hearty rough and tumble, let alone two armies at death grips.

In addition, if one fired a gun there the shell would go merrily across the Channel and burst in France, and that might annoy our Allies. The use of airplanes has been considered, but the fishermen’s Council of War has come to the conclusion that they would do more harm than good, since one bomb dropped on Minquiers would mean the end of the island, and there would be nothing left to fight over or to fight on. While the British and French Governments are trying to ascertain to which country the island really belongs, patriots in Jersey are pointing out that it belongs to neither. Minquiers, they say, belongs to Jersey, and so, for that matter, does the whole British Empire. They resent the phrase: "Jersey is British property.” Britain is Jersey’s property, since William the Con-