Distracted Samoa

There Is No Spirit Of Compromise

Judge Luxford, of the High Court of Western Samoa, on April 22, found O. F.

Nelson & Co. Ltd., guilty of 28 charges under the Seditious Organisations Ordin ance, and inflicted a fine of £200 in each case, or a total of £5,600. Forbearance was shown by the prosecution in with drawing a second series of charges laid under the Maintenance of Authority in Native Affairs Ordinance. The judge, summing up, strongly condemned the de fendant company. The offences commit ted, it appears, consisted mainly of re ceiving payments from a native organisa tion called the Mau. —Newspaper’ Report.

I HAVE no personal knowledge of the condition of affairs in Samoa.

All that I know of the protracted struggle between the New Zealand Ad ministration (which functions under a “C” class mandate) and the Mau, I have learned from ex parte statements.

The position is so difficult and critical, and the absence of unbiassed informa tion so marked that we of The Pacific Islands Monthly have left the whole subject severely alone. At the first opportunity, someone from this journal, as part of our policy of giving service to the Pacific communities, will visit Samoa and try and sum up the situa tion there truthfully and fairly.

In the meantime, one cannot but be impressed by the fact that ap parently every one of the few indepen dent commentators who have visited the Territory has attacked the New Zealand Administration. There seems to be no sign of a more amicable feel ing between officialdom and the Mau— no suggestion of a more conciliatory spirit. There has been still another change in the Administration, and another Administrator has gone down there, making the fifth since New Zealand took charge of the group.

Therefore, this fine that has been im posed upon O. F. Nelson, with its sug gestion of sheer savagery, gives a most unfortunate impression. No doubt, O. F. Nelson is a very stubborn, per tinacious. difficult man. In the eyes of the Administration, he is the world’s

prize nuisance. He represents—indeed, embodies—the fighting spirit of the Mau, and there is no suggestion of compromise about him. Probably, he has been hopelessly embittered by his deportation—which surely was the stupidest thing ever carried out by a bull-necked, swashbuckling, fatheaded administration—and will not permit the dead past to bury its dead.

Between the brutality of the Ad ministration (in imposing a fine of £5,600, when a tenth of the amount would have emphasised the law and established the principle) and the pig headed obstructiveness of O. F. Nelson and the Mau, there is no sign of com promise. Yet only by conciliation and compromise can this most unhappy state of affairs be ended.

Something must be done soon if not for the sake of bringing peace to beautiful, distracted Samoa, then in order that a British Dominion may be spared, the ultimate humiliation of being deprived of a mandate to govern a subject people. The League of Na tions is not particularly notable for its

patience.

R. W. Robson.