Missions And Trade.

[To the Editor.] Sir, —I wish to express my apprecia tion of the article in your last issue by Mr. Gordon Thomas, and to support his plea for a better understanding be tween missionaries and traders and for a larger tolerance on both sides.

My present purpose in writing is to inform your Gizo correspondents that the Methodist Mission in the Solomons is not under the Society I represent, but is under the control of the Method ist Church of New Zealand. Should there be any grounds for complaint, I am sure that the General Secretary of the New Zealand Society (Rev. W. A.

Sinclair, Probert Chambers, Queen Street, Auckland) will see that proper investigation is made, for their ideals are the same as our own.

I would like to state the attitude of our own Society: 1. We allow no private trading of any kind by a missionary. 2. Our small mission stores are only for the use of our slenderly paid native staff and charges are only to cover cost. 3. The Board of Missions has or dered a full investigation, and if it should be shown that the privilege extended to our native staff has been abused, either the stores will be closed or regula tions so tightened up as to pre vent any future abuse.

It may be information to some of your readers that our two plantations in the Mandated Territory are not a source of profit to the Society, for any excess of income over expenditure (not much in these days) is handed over to the Native Church for educational and welfare purposes. Hence no Mission ary of our Society has the slightest personal interest, direct or indirect, in what might be considered the commer cial side of the Mission’s activity.

I am, etc.,

John W. Burton,

General Secretary, Methodist Missionary Society of Sydney, Australasia.

May 4, 1932.