THE FRENCH AND THE NEW HEBRIDES.
IN the Times of Wednesday there was a long account of the French occupation of the New Hebrides, part of which deserves more attention from the English Government and the English public than we fear it is likely to get at the present time. The French have not done much in the way of colonising the islands. The wrong sort of people have come cart, and the majority of them have either died or gone back to Frank. It is very doubtful, however, whether the right sort of people would have fared much better. The climate is one in which white men cannot work, in which they may think themselves fortunate if they can even live. What the French have done is to estab- lish a new and apparently flourishing slave-settlement. The plantations of the New Hebrides Company at Port Vila, in the Island of Vete, are worked by some two hundred men and women " recruited " from the other islands of the group, or from the Solomon Islands. Englishmen have not many stones to throw at other nations in respect of the trade in native labour. There have been horrors enough in the past to make them very chary of criticism on this head. But at least we took what seemed to be adequate precautions against obvious abuses. If they sometimes failed to answer the purpose, it was the fault of the agents through whom we had to work. The general success of our efforts is shown by the most significant fact that the New Hebrides Company, which is French, is obliged to employ Englishmen as recruiters. The reason for this can only he that the natives will not willingly work in any but English Colonies. The protection they enjoy there is at least sufficient to make the service fairly popular, and it is only by deluding them into the belief that they are going to Queensland or Fiji, that the New Hebrides Company is able to obtain labourers at all. The natives have very goad reason for making this distinction. The vessels of the New Hebrides Company carry no Government agent, and are under no official supervision. There is no one to see that the natives are sent home at the end of the three years for which they are nominally engaged ; and when they are sent home, it seems, in the matter of money, to be pretty much as they came. A Company which recruits its labourers in this fashion must regard with dismay the prospect of being left without military support in the event of a difficulty with its " boys ;" and in view of what is going on at Paris at this moment, it seems not impossible that the French occupation of the islands may be partly in the interest of the Company.
All this would be no concern of Englishmen, but for two considerations,—one is that the military occupation under cover of which the New Hebrides Company follows its trade is in open violation of a treaty obligation ; the other, that this violation goes on under the eyes of our own Colonists. Few things, it may at once be admitted, are more difficult than to say when the fulfilment of a treaty obligation ought to be demanded at all hazards. In public, as in private affairs, there are rights upon which a wise man will not insist, though he is clearly entitled to them. He says frankly he could have them if he chose, but only at the coat of more trouble or more annoyance than the rights are worth. At the same time, he will not, if he be really a wise man, ignore the risks in which thus to forego his rights may land him. The history of bankruptcy, for example, is to a great extent the history of dishonesty nourished by the supineness of creditors. A man does not care whether he can pay his debts or not, because he hopes that those to whom they are due will be equally indifferent. If the omission to enforce a right leads to the denial of other rights, it may be a more costly process than the enforcement would have been.
Is it quite certain that this may not be true of the French occupation of the New Hebrides ? To our minds, we confess, it appears the very reverse of certain. Our conduct of foreign affairs, as we pointed out last week, is passing through a very critical stage. Eventually, we believe, it will regain the vigour, the decision, the willingness to submit to great sacrifices for great ends, which formerly belonged to it. But in the interval those qualities are wanting, and they are wanting at a time when Europe is uneasy, and when the action of every Great Power is very closely scanned. It is useless to expect that England can sit still while an undertaking quite recently given to her by Franca is ostentatiously disregarded, and not suffer by her apparent indifference in the opinion of other nations. In what ways she may suffer may be seen by a passage in the Hamburg Correspondent which was translated in the St. James's Gazette of Tuesday. The German writer sets out what the French have done in the matter, and then goes on thus Instead of categorically demanding the evacuation of the New Hebrides and the fulfilment of the undisputed agreement, England has confined herself to feeble representa- tions. At the Colonial Conference in May, Lord Salisbury expressed himself so pusillanimously on the question, that one of the Australian representatives assured him that his speech would have done the highest honour to a French Premier On the whole, we must regard England as in a very unsatisfactory position. Russia, France, and America are openly of opinion that, even under Lord Salisbury, it is time to say, as a Russian diplomatist remarked to the English Ambassador in St. Petersburg ten years ago,— ' Resistance, my lord,—that is a word which no longer has a place in the English dictionary." If this extract represents the opinion held of England in Germany as well, the conclusion inevitably follows that things are coming, if they have not come, to that pass in which England is neither valued as a friend nor feared as an enemy. In the present instance, there is no question of Continental intervention, or of mixing our- selves up with other men's quarrels. The simple fads are that we thought the independence of the New Hebrides im- portant enough to make a treaty about, but that when that treaty is violated, we think it prudent to hold our tongues. It is not in Europe only that our action in the matter of the New Hebrides is closely watched. It excites at least as much attention, and far more irritation, in Australia. There is no question upon which the Australians feel so keenly. Rightly or wrongly, they feel that it concerns their whole future as a community. Even if there were no treaty to be invoked, it would he seemly to examine the demands of the Colonists in regard to this question With care and sympathy. Then, how- ever, we might say, at the end of the investigation, that we thought their fears unfounded or exaggerated. As it is, any criticism of their fears is out of place. What they ask is not that we should sympathise with their excitement, but simply that we should demand the execution of a specific treaty which was concluded for their benefit, and which they have never consented to waive. That is an awkward request for a Power like England to refuse to Colonies like Australia.
There are two steps the English Government might very well take which, though they fall far short of that insistence on the specific performance of the treaty to which the Australians think they are entitled, would yet show the French Government that England is more in earnest than they have been accustomed, perhaps, to think her. In the first, they might refuse, categorically and unmistakably, to discuss any other question in connection with that of the New Hebrides. This would at least show the French Government that we are alive to the special and serious nature of the issue. In the second place, they might despatch to the islands an English force of equal strength with the French force. This would only involve the maintenance there of a hundred men; but it would be an intimation alike to France and to Australia that a French occupation would never be permitted by England. There would be nothing in this to which the French Govern- ment could reasonably object, since, if it is not a violation of the treaty for French troops to be in the islands, it must equally be no violation of it for English troops to be there. The advantage of this expedient would be that as a joint occupation can serve no special French purpose, useful or sentimental, France would no longer have any motive for keeping any soldiers in the islands, since the only result of so doing would- be to keep English troops there also. It is an expedient to which no valid objection can well be raised, and which would probably have the effect of bringing to an end the incident which would have provoked it.
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