FALKLAND ISLANDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 November 1939, Page 6

FALKLAND ISLANDS

DEMAND BY ARGENTINE. HISTORIC OLD GROUP. The Buenos Aires newspaper "Critica" alleges that nationalistic groups are distributing posters demanding the return of the Falkland Islands, a British Crown Colony, to Argentina. The movement is said to by financed by Germany. The Falkland Islands are situated in the South Atlantic, about 250 miles east of the nearest point of the mainland of South America. The area totals 4613 square miles and the population was estimated in 1937 at 2390 of whom 1070 were females. The chief town is Stanley. with a population of more than 1300. The chief industry is sheep farming, about 3,006.000 acres being in pasture. A recent census showed 604,346 sheep. Whaling and scaling also are carried on. The Government is administered by a Governor, at present Sir Henniker Heaton. Education is compulsory. The predominating element in the population is Scottish Scottish shepherds having superseded the South American gauehos. English, Dutch, and French explorers visited the territory from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The French took possession of the islands in 1764. but three years later ceded them to Spain. In the meantime the English also had taken possession, on the ground of prior discovery, and in 1771 Spain yielded the territory to Britain by convention.