ENGLAND AND THE WEST INDIES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7944, 19 January 1906, Page 7

ENGLAND AND THE WEST INDIES.

As evidenoed by tho mail which reached London in the last week of October, the feeling i 9 rapidly gaining ground in the West lndiea (states tho Exchange Telergaph Company) that the British Government intend at no distant date to abandon the West Indies to the United States. It is regarded aa extremely significant that President Roosevelt should have recently sent a special commissioner to report upon the condition of all the West Indian colonies. This fact, coupled with the withdrawal of the troops, and the abandonment of the mail contract is regarded aa significant. In an interview, Sir Neville Lubbock, K.O.M.G. (chairman of the West India Oummittee) told a Daily News representative that he did not believe the Government had any such intention. What they had been told was that they had finally made up their minds to withdraw all the troops, a atep which everyone in the West lndiea considered to he so wrong, and so dangerous that they naturally jumped to the conclusion that there was something behind it, and that that something was the cession of the inlands to the United States. All the same, the Government might be doing it without having the least idea that they were doing it. Jamaica was already overrun with Americans, and only that morning he reoeived a letter from a friend of his in Antigua, in whioh he stated that President Roosevelt had despatched a special commissioner to report upon the whole of the islands. That oarse on top of the refusal to renew the postal contract whicfi had been in existence for 60 years, and, in telegraphic matters, generally, the exhibition of nKtch apathy on .the part.of the Government. If the Government meant to cede the islands to the United States they ought to be told so frankly. If they did not then they were behaving exactly as if they did. The whole question would he laid before Mr Balfour if they were successful in obtaining an interview.