Parable Of The Pacific

By Arthur J. Vogan, F.R.G.S., etc., in “The Christian World.”

As I sat on the Stoep of the native built government Rest-house at Oma rakana, the principal village in Kiri wina, the big island of the Trobiands, our cook, a native prisoner, kindly lent to me by the local Resident Mag istrate, took a look too long as a comely passing garden-worker, and spilled some of the precious sugar on the sensitive-plants at my feet.

As a dog-fight attracts the intelligent part of the mob round a butter-box politician so the famous red ants rushed in to enjoy the rare feast spread be fore them. In a surprisingly short time the white crystals had disap peared “into the Evigkeit”; and the cupboard was bare once more. But the news had spread, just as it did throughout the world that Australia was borrowing and spending money galore; and that big wages, and ca’canny methods during abbreviated work-hours, obtained.

More and more ants arrived; but not even a Dole remained for them. Star vation has no laws; and to the disap pointed and hungry ant or man, there is no conscience; and no-barbed-wire fence of “Meum et Tuum.”

Those “careful-bodies” of red-ants that that had hurried off with grains to store in Savings Banks of mulch and mud, now became the objective.

But more insects kept arriving; and the robbers themselves were being rob bed, there amongst the purple-blossom and dark-green leaves! Anarchy, mur der , and all the horrors of a fierce multitude of angry creatures milling amidst the wreckage caused by a dis turbance in the natural and usual flow of economic events, went on; a micro cosmic parable of the gigantic world folly of greed and luxury that I had left behind me in Australia.