Tropicalities

"WHAT a pity that Australia wasn’t given the Samoan Mandate, and New Zealand the Mandate over New Guinea,” said a well-informed man who heard the recent debate at Canberra on the New Guinea Bill. “Australia, with her extraordinary supper-sensitiveness about the rights of subject peoples, and her willingness to let any fool get up and bawl his opinions in the market place, and her hatred of display, would have got on splendidly with the Mau.

While swashbuckling New Zealand, who apparently believes in governing Pacific Islands communities on a basis of strict discipline, with plenty of snap and polish, would have been very popular in New Guinea. As it is, Australia is criticised for mollycoddling the Kan akas, and New Zealand is condemned for her sergeant-major methods in Samoa.”

Which is an idea! Let’s start an agitation for a swapping of mandates between Australia and New Zealand! * * * ANOTHER anthropologist has gone to New Guinea in the person of Miss Camilla Wedgwood. She left by the November Macdhui for Manam (Vulcan) Island, off the coast of New Guinea mainland, between Madang and the Sepik, where she will reside for a year and study, on behalf of the Australian National Research Council, the effect of European contact on the natives. She is an English girl, a graduate of Cam bridge, and a daughter of a well-known member of the House of Commons.

Conditions on Manam are still very primitive. There is an active volcano there. * * * MRS. H. J. MOORS, who died on Octo ber 25 at her residence in Apia, Samoa, was a Samoan lady who was adopted as a daughter by Mr. and Mrs.

John Johnston. The former was a pioneer settler of Samoa, who hailed from Scotland, and the latter was a relative of Mrs. Moors, having been of part Samoan-English parentage. As a girl, Miss Nimo Johnston visited Scot land with her adopted parents, and on her return to her native country, mar ried the late Mr. H. J. Moors, the author of “With Stevenson in Samoa,” who was, until the time of his death in March, 1926, a leading merchant and planter of Samoa. Mr. Moors owned several small islands in the South Pacific, and with Mrs. Moors spent some time in Sophia Island, where their third daugh ter, who was named Sophia, was born; She is now Mrs. John Hellesoe, of Apia.

Her eldest daughter, Mrs. I. C. Heather ington, is, with her husband, a perman ent resident of Auckland. Her second daughter is the wife of the Hon. O. F.

F. Nelson & Co., Ltd., which was in Moors, is now a director of Messrs. O.

F. Nelson & CO., Ltd., which was in corporated as the first company regis tered in Western Samoa under the New Zealand regime. Mrs. Moors was the first president of the Ladies’ Falaula Club of Apia, which, under the new name of the Seiaute Club, has played a big part in the social life of Apia.

“HERE is one sign of the times,” writes a Cook Islands correspond ent. ‘‘Native people hereabouts are going back to candle-nuts for lighting purposes. Kerosene and petrol, which they have used for a generation or two, are now too costly. The natives of Tahiti are abandoning European clothes and returning to the ancient pareu.”

This, really, is a most interesting com mentary on world economic conditions.

A hundred years ago, the Polynesians obtained all their requirements from the surrounding bush, reef and sea —they had no economic problem. Then came the Europeans, and Polynesia acquired a liking for European clothes, food and manufactured food of all kinds. To ob tain these things, they worked a little, producing copra, fruit, shell —all being articles which they might exchange for the goods they wanted. Custom estab lished certain values —so much copra for so much cloth, canned beef, kerosene, etc. Now comes the amazing, catas trophic fall in the value of all primary products, so that twice as much copra and fruit are needed to buy the same amount of white men’s goods. The Poly nesian will not work twice as hard —he solves the problem simply by not working at all, doing without the coveted goods of the white man, and returning to the ways of his grandfather.

There, you economists, bite on that!

There you have the world’s problem in a coconut-shell. What is the solution?

Have primary products been over-pro duced, far beyond the world’s capacity to consume? Will reduced production restore values? Or does the trouble lie in the obvious disparity between the values of primary and manufactured goods? Or has the breakdown occurred in the connection between primary and secondary production, so that the re duced costs of raw material and labour are not coming through promptly to the selling value of the manufactured article, with the result that chaos has threat ened.

At any rate, here is tho fact: The Cook Islanders will return to native forms of life until such time as the raw materials they produce can be sold to the European at a price which will en able them to buy from the European the manufactured goods they require. * * * I ASKED my friend, Mr. A. J. Vogan, the archaeologist, what he knew about that mysterious trilithon near Nukua lofa, to which reference is made else where in this issue. In an interesting note, he says that the monument prob ably connects up with the pre-historic ruins in the Caroline Islands. ‘‘The whole Pacific was ‘civilised’ 800 years ago,’’ he remarks, ‘‘and the mosquito and some illness wiped out the people.”

It was officially announced in a recent issue of the Fiji Royal Gazette, that the hurricane season would commence on November 1 and would last until April 30, 1933. During this period weather re ports will be exchanged regularly by radio between the following wireless stations in the Pacific: Nukualofa, Haa pai, Vavau, Niuafoou, Keppel Is., Niue, Norfolk Is., Vila, Funafuti, Papeete, Ma ketea, Apia, Atuona, Rarotonga, Aitu taki, Ocean Is., Raiatea, Rotuma, Nou mea, Pagoumeme and all Fiji stations.