Protectorate of the soil on which they live, and this is precisely what the French Consul, by inscribing all disaffected Siamese as French citizens, is doing. The invention of the Protectorate is, of course, very useful in certain cases. Many of the Pacific Islands are the natural heritage of the future Australian people, and it would have been most unfair to them to allow alien nations to seize upon points of vantage about their very gates. It would have been equally unfair to the English taxpayer and to the natives of the islands to assume the government of countries that were content to be under the authority of their own chiefs. If the idea of the Protectorate had entered the heads of politicians sixty years ago, the French would not now own Tahiti and New Caledonia, nor the Germans the Marshalls, the Northern Solomons, and Northern New Guinea. There are Protectorates and Protectorates. In some you may have a resident adviser who virtually rules the country; in others a resident who is there to give advice when it is asked for; in others no resident at all. To the first class belong Zanzibar and the protected states of India; to the second, Tonga and Somaliland; and to the third, Niué; but in every class the establishment of a Protectorate is probably the prologue to annexation more or less delayed. Why then was the flag hoisted? There is, in fact, no reason why the flag should be hoisted in a Protectorate, for the mere hoisting of a piece of bunting is not in itself an act of appropriation recognised by international lawyers. At one time or another the British flag has been hoisted in many parts of the world that now belong to other nations. The legally recognised act is the reading of a proclamation, and of this the flag is a mere symbol that adds nothing to the legality when it is there, nor takes away from it when it is absent. As a general rule the flag is not hoisted in countries that have a flag of their own. It has never been hoisted in Zanzibar nor in the protected states of India. On the other hand, a people like the Niuéans, who have no flag, and know that other countries have one, would never consider the Protectorate effective unless they were granted the outward symbol of their allegiance. As the matter had been left to my discretion, I had no hesitation in giving them what they wanted. Fortunately none of the complications attending a Protectorate had time to arise in Niué, for six months later the island was formally annexed to the Colony of New Zealand.