Editorial Note.

Mr. Vogan appears to have been carried away by some strong feeling, the cause and object of which are not very clear; and has quite missed the point.

The point at issue in the Larkin case has nothing whatever to do with the general treatment of the New Guinea natives. Larkin, by adminis tering excessive punishment to a native who assaulted him, committed a punishable offence —there is no doubt of that. But, we contend, Larkin was not guilty of murder, or of any crime carrying the dreadful punishment of ten years’ penal servitude.

The reference to Judge Wanliss “bravely upholding the old Christian method’’, is a little obscure. Judge Wanliss is under criticism, first, be cause he has fastened the crime of murder upon a man apparently guilty of manslaughter; and, second, because the punishment (10 years’ penal servi tude) with which he sought to fit the crime, is grotesquely out of alignment with the punishment which he has on other occasions imposed on Kanakas found guilty of murder.

We are puzzled by what Mr. Vogan says about the pagan white men en dangering the advance of civilisation in New Guinea. “Civilisation” —by which, of course. Is meant ‘European isation!” —has advanced more rapidly in New Guinea during the past ten years than in any other part of the world. This is due partly to the Ad ministration’s wisely executed policy of bringing the bush natives under control: and partly to the development of the Territory’s resources under the thrust of private enterprise. But there has been no exploitation or degrada tion of the natives. On the contrary, it is charged against the New Guinea Administration that its policy of ‘pro tecting” the natives is carried to ex tremes, so that employers of native labor are supervised and checked to the point of persecution. The Larkin case is

really a result of that. The official method of dealing with industrial offenders is so weak and lenient—a spell in the calaboose has no terror for the sophisticated “coon” —that isolated planters simply take the law into their own hands, and control their labour in the only logical way, which is by a judicious application of the cane to the place apparently provided by nature for such a purpose. Under the German system—where an employer was al lowed to inflict corporal punishment, and, after administering chastisement, had to make a careful record of all the circumstances, for subsequent in vestigation by a visiting official —Larkin probably would not have over-flogged the Kanaka.