Shall Mr. Cowley, Of Tonga,

Be Taken Seriously?

From Our Own Correspondent.

Nukualofa, May 1.

PURPOSEFUL, and serious minded readers in Tonga must have felt pained, if not actually hurt, at the tone of a letter to the Editor under the caption, ‘‘Tonga’s Economic Condi tion,” appearing in the December P.I.M.

We are sure that each reader started off this article feeling that here at last he would get what he was waiting for—some concrete sugges tions that would make for his betterment —some progressive policy, profoundly expressed and ex pounded—something not abstract, but solid and sure —something, in fact, that would rattle into his brain and give his intellect some scope to swing around in. 1 venture to say that, before he had finished the article, his intellect was swinging around alright, but without the acces sary scope.

We suspect that every reader fell into the trap, as we did, and did not realise till near the conclusion of the letter that the whole was a grand burlesqua.

We congratulate Mr. Cowley on having that very rare phenomenon—a sense of the ridiculous —a sense far more subtle than a sense of humour—and he has the happy knack of convey ing that sense to paper.

We were not even suspicious when he spoke of giving £5 to slngletless and poverty-stricken Tongans. though, goodness knows, we should have been, because £5 is five pounds, and Tongans, in the state described, are about as plentiful as snowballs in Hades. Then we reached his par. 4, where there is a lot of confusing talk about disrobing before the High Commissioner. We certainly should have taken a tumble here. But no! We read the paragraph over three or four times, forwards and back wards, scratched our head, and passed it as read.

Still unsuspicious, we solemnly gleaned all that stuff about the “booted and spurred bureau cracy” and ‘‘get off his back” and then, in a

blue funk, our eyes chased up the column to see, if by some mischance, we had got tangled up with some racing news. We think we started to feel there was a ‘‘catch’ when we got to the paragraph stating that the Queen of Tonga said, “There are 1,200 taxpayers without a bit of land.”

Here we sat up, because, as far as we recol lected, Her Majesty had stated that there was plenty of land for 1,200 taxpayers who had ap parently njt availed themselves of the gift. (We would like to digress here and say that the Queen’s statement did surprise us, because we had no idea that as mechanics, storemen, yardmen, carpenters, drivers, etc., the trade warranted so many—1,200 is a lot).

From there on, in his article, we began to get a glimmer cf Mr. Cowley’s leg-pulling tactics.

These tactics were emphasised when we got to the statement that three small consignments of kumaras glutted New Zealand. Just think over that and smile! We know that, right here, we felt an admiration for the writer, second only to our youthful worship of Mark Twain and Stephen Laycock. (I wonder if any other reader saw daylight at this stage).

Having got ‘‘en rapport,” we found no diffi culty, then, in finishing the article right down to the penultimate paragraph where the sug gestion is made that the prosperity and posterity of Tonga is better catered for in a Government position than in the cultivation of the soil.

The final pronouncements concerning Charles and James of happy memory are really good. (By the way, there w r as another fellow called Pepys living around about that time, and we would like to write a few of his historic pro nouncements but, as space is limited, we let it pass).

Most readers will congratulate Mr. Cowley on ‘‘putting over” a thundering good hoax, and for those who do not incline to Mr. Cowley’s levity in dealing with a serious subject, we would simply add ‘‘tuku aibe”