punishment.

Labour Idealism and Native Administration

THREE men of the Kuni tribe came down from the mountains of Papua to trade with the coastal people, as is their custom. They car ried with them their goods and their money. They were suddenly and treacherously attacked by coastal nat ives and killed, their wares stolen and their bodies hidden. The police un covered the crime, however, and the two murderers were sentenced to death. The sentence was delivered by a trusted judge, after a fair trial; and was confirmed by the Executive Council of Papua.

In this case there was a considera tion of far greater weight than the punishment of a crime—important as that may be. This was a paramount occasion for the justification of the white man’s rule.

In the old days the hillmen of Papua met the coastal men warily.

There was much trade between the mountains and the sea shore, but no trust. The two peoples did not mingle —and they took their own effective measures both for protection and revenge. Then came the white men, who forbade fighting, with its con comitants of assassination and ven detta. The natives accepted the white man’s law —the hill folk trustingly, the coastal tribes sullenly. The white man enforced obedience.

In the light of those facts, consider the importance of placing the supreme punishment upon the Bailala mur derers—men who not only slew for gain, but also betrayed the trust of the Kuni men in the protection promised by the Administration. The murderers were both “educated” natives the dangerous kind, who wish to place themselves on an equality with white men. Apart from the fact that the whole of the circumstances of the cal lous crime demanded the death penalty, it was essential that the Papuan natives generally should ex perience the full moral effect of the execution.

And then, when the date of execu tion was actually fixed, the Federal Cabinet —the members of which know as much about governing natives as a rabbit does about bi-metallism —stepped in and commuted the death sentence, to some other form of punishment— obviously because the Australian Labor party officially does not favour capital

punishment.

Could political puerility go further?

The native understands only the simple, elemental facts of nature —the stick across his rump when he is obstreperous; good food and kindness when he deserves them; certain, inev itable death when be commits a crime demanding that penalty; and the justice and bonded word of the white man. The idealism which forbids the death sentence as a punishment for murder is questioned, sharply enough, in European communities; in the case of the Papuan natives it is ridiculous and absurd. The commutation can and will be accepted by the natives in only one way—as weakness in applying the law and as a rank betrayal of the hillmen’s trust in the white mail’s protection.

The mollycoddling laws under which natives must be governed already make the task of the Australian Ad ministrators difficult enough. Such incidents as that noted, representing fantastic interference with the work of wise and experienced administrators, tend to make the position intolerable