Happy Tonga!

Why Depression is Not Seriously Felt.

To the Editor.

Sir, —I have read with interest your corres pondent’s several articles on the Tongan tax payer and the comments of his critics.

Prom my own observations of this island Kingdom, I draw the conclusion that the criti cisms made are not quite justified. In the first place, the critics have accepted the year 1930 as being an average year, whereas your corres pondent has taken a general average which, in cluding 1929 as it does, is much more properly a fair estimate. Why should the very worst year the Kingdom has experienced in twenty be taken as a basis?

Then, again, Tonga, blessed with an exceed ingly fertile soil, is a country in which most tropical and temperate zone food plants grow and flourish amazingly, and the largest propor tion of the food consumed by the natives is grown by themselves, and is never put upon the market at all. Hard cash, it must be re membered, is not the only form of wealth.

In fact, in this country, practically the only actual necessity for procuring money is to pay taxes and purchase luxuries from the stores.

I guarantee that 90 per cent, of the native population would be perfectly happy and con tented if all forms of currency were withdrawn.

Any visitor to the outlying islands of the group cannot help being struck by this fact.

“Ikai Kaka” asks if land is available. If he were as conversant with the conditions pre vailing in Tonga as he would have us believe, he would know that there are about 70,000-acres of fertile land awaiting settlement, and that sections can be obtained by native taxpayers by simply making application to the Minister of

Lands. The land area of the kingdom is some thing like 150,000 acres, with some 7,000 tax payers each entitled to from 8½ to 12 acres, so there is a big surplus, even after deducting European leases, bad land, etc., etc.

Her Majesty the Queen, in her address at the opening of Parliament, expressed the opinion that caution should be used in granting leases, owing to the increasing needs of the people.

This, mind you, in a country where more than half the area of wonderfully fertile land is un occupied, and, at present, the breeding ground of numerous noxious plants over which there is no control whatsoever.

I would like to say a word in favour of your correspondent’s intensive cultivation suggestion.

It would be a very good system to work on, though possibly a little too far advanced for Tonga. I do net mean to make two coconuts grow where one grew before, as “Toga maa Toga” thinks, but use a rotation of side-line crops among young nuts, as may be seen in exceptional cases in native plantations, and not permit the clearings to go back into scrub, as is generally done. The last-mentioned custom is the predominating cause of the lack of normal increase in the copra production in recent years. The reason being that, when next the taxpayer decides to use that par ticular piece of land to plant his yams, he cuts down the scrub, puts a fire to it, and away goes the scrub, coconut palms and everything else. The cycle is repeated again and again.

“Toga maa Toga’s” letter makes good read ing, but most of his statements are grossly exaggerated, particularly when he states that half tire kingdom is subsisting on Government rations. Why does he spoil a good article in this atrocious manner? It is true that a depu tation from Haapai asked for assistance for the natives there during the drought, but not half of them, as I know, required it or took advant age of it. and the population of Haapai is not HALF of HALF of the population of the king dom.—I am, etc.,

Fairplay.

Nukualofa, 16th December.