The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. FRIDAY, MAY 15, 1908. THE COLONISING TEST.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2191, 15 May 1908, Page 2

The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. FRIDAY, MAY 15, 1908. THE COLONISING TEST.

It is a truly depressing story of collapse that the Noumea correspondent of the Sydney “Morning Herald” tells of the French colony of New Caledonia, which lies so near to the eastern seaboard of the Commonwealth. (Trade has fallen off to an alarming extent, and' the revenues have fallen with it; property values have shrunk in some instances perilously near to vanishing point; French population shows a decrease; and now, as a .further calamity, the A.U.S.N. Company is about to withdraw from the New Caledonian trade, thus terminating a shipping connection of forty years’ standing. Obviously this brings the colony face to face with a very serious position, and one cannot but feel considerable sympathy for the colonists in their troubles, which are very much akin to those which beset Australia in the early period of her development. But quite apart from the position as it may present itself to the colonists themselves, the State of New Caledonia to-day can scarcely be a source of inspiration to the French Colonial Office. France has had New Caledonia and the contiguous islands since 1854. Together they represent a very large territory, and a very rich one. New Caledonia itself is probably the very richest large island in the Pacific, if we exclude New Guinea. ' It abounds in minerals, which, in t'he main, lend themselves to singularly economic methods of exploitation. It has vast stretches of rich land suitable for the iiroduction of a great variety of tropical products. It has still other lands capable of considerable pastoral development. Yet after more than half a century of occupation, we find, agriculture still in a miserably primitive condition, and while the nickel and chrome mines have been practically the mainstay of the colony, the mining development generally lias not been on a scale at all commensurate With the opportunities which stand as permanent temptations to enterprise. AVhat is true of New Caledonia is true also, more or less, of tho other French possessions in the Pacific. The only exception perhaps is the New Hebrides, where France, 'under the stimulus of direct competition with Britain—and ill the evident desire to strengthen her hold ill a group of islands which happen to be the subject of no special solicitude on the part of Downing Street —has manifested'' energy and liberality. But generally speaking her attempts at colonisation in the Pacific have been failures.- Until lately perhaps we might have said the same of Germany, but in view of the serious way in which Germany is now taking in hand the development of her •Pacific possessions, we may have to revise our estimate of. Germany as a coloniser. Nevertheless ;it is still true, even of 'Germany, that she has not mastered the true secret of successful colonisation. Max O’Rell’s dictum, “that Germany has colonists without colonies. France has colonies without colonists, and 'Britain has both,” may not at the present day be literally applicable; blit it remains broadly true as a summary of the position of the three countries in relation to colonisation. Both France and Germany have yet to findout how it is that men of their nation are such great successes as colonists under the British flag, and such comparative failures under their own. And if they care to probe for reas-

ons they find them in tho larger measure of freedom which obtains in all British possessions. Neither Germany nor Franco has yet arrived at the conception of autonomous colonies, and until they do they will never bocomo groat colonisers on their own account. 'That is what is the matter' with New Caledonia. Apart from the prison population, ■which tho oarlior policy in regard to the possession has left as a problem extremely difficult ol' solution, Now Caledonia to-day is (suffering because of local inability to manage local affairs in the manner dictated by local conditions. Instead of being able to decido what within very broad limits is best for itself, the colony has to take its. policy as dictated from ■Paris, and administered-by an amn.v of officials, whose salaries are a charge on the local revenues. Steeped in debt, industrially stagnant, and wound round with expensive redtape, it is scarcely a matter for wonderment that a section of t'he population should cherish the hope that tlioir rich, though ill-used, colony should pass to the control of the Commonwealth. The. wonder rather is that the French Government should •be so slow in arriving at a knowledge of tlio wiser way.